After running a Scrub followed by Balance and Defrag operations, I rebooted the NAS box and ran the extended disk test from the boot menu.
This is the 1st disk test on my 11 month old ReadyNAS 516 (firmware version 6.2.4) with 6 x 4 TB WD Red drives. The test took about 10 hours to complete & the machine rebooted automatically. Where can I see the test results? There's nothing in the system logs.
All my desktop PC drives are full formatted every 12-14 months to weed out any bad sectors or other problems. I plan to run a full disk test at the same frequency with the 516. Is there a Netgear recommended disk test interval?
There's nothing related to the outcome of the disk test in the Volume, Disk and System Logs.The machine is configured for X-RAID.
How do I check the results using SSH? I could use Putty to check, but can you please point me to the volume path where test results are stored?
PS - request your advice on the frequency that disk tests should be run. The NAS is used in a home environment (light use/load factor) and is mostly switched off when not in use for >2 days.
On the test results, just check the SMART stats. Any reallocated sectors, pending sectors, etc. are stored in the stats (and maintained by the drive itself).
Volume scrub is perhaps the closest thing to reformatting.
I don't think Netgear has any general guidance. I also am a home user (though I work from home).
Personally I use a quarterly Maintenance cycle:
Volume Scrub: 1 Jan, 1 April, 1 Jul, 1 Oct
Volume Defrag: 1 Feb, 1 May, 1 Aug, 1 Nov
Volume Balance 1 Mar, 1 Jun, 1 Sept, 1 Dec
I do disk tests once a quarter also (note these are also scheduled for the volume, not disks specifically).
Volume Disk Test: 15 Feb, 15 May, 15 Aug, 15 Nov.
These operations can take a while to complete (sometimes more than 24 hours). So running them regularly might impact your power down approach.
In my case, NAS Backups are scheduled daily for midnight, maintenance operations at 2 am (well after NAS backups are usually completed). CrashPlan runs on the Pro-6, and that resyncs daily at 3 am. Desktop PC image backups are scheduled weekly (staggered) for 4 am (I do the laptops manually during the day). Automatic Snapshots (enabled for most shares) are also daily. That's quite a bit of background activity when you add in the maintenance, so I leave the systems powered 24/7 (with spindown enabled).
