Got a rack of hard drives clicking at a medical office in Cleveland

Six drives in a RAID 5 array, all from the same batch, started clicking within 48 hours of each other. Turns out the firmware had a known bug that causes head crashes under certain vibration frequencies. What do you use to check drive firmware versions across a whole server?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivan_perez1mo ago

Ah man, that batch firmware bug is a nightmare. For checking across a whole server, I've had good luck with smartctl from smartmontools. You can script it to dump the firmware revision for every drive in one shot. Just run something like 'smartctl -a /dev/sdX | grep Firmware' in a loop for each device. Your mileage may vary depending on your RAID controller, but that's my go-to for a quick inventory.

valwest1mo ago

Wait hold on, you're saying you actually had GOOD LUCK with smartctl across a whole server? Man, my experience has been the exact opposite. Every time I try to script that thing in a loop, it locks up on some random drive or gives me garbage output. I've had to kill processes more times than I can count. Plus half the time grep Firmware returns nothing because the controller masks the info anyway. You must be running some magic setup where your RAID card actually plays nice with smartmontools. Color me jealous honestly.