Re: Plug-pull testing worked, diskchecker.pl failed

On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> In general, through, diskchecker.pl is the more sensitive test. If it
> fails, storage is unreliable for PostgreSQL, period. It's good that you've
> followed up by confirming the real database corruption implied by that is
> also visible. In general, though, that's not needed. Diskchecker says the
> drive is bad, you're done--don't put a database on it. Doing the database
> level tests is more for finding false positives: where diskchecker says the
> drive is OK, but perhaps there is a filesystem problem that makes it
> unreliable, one that it doesn't test for.

Thanks. That's the conclusion we were coming to too, though all I've
seen is lost transactions and not any other form of damage.

> What SSD are you using? The Intel 320 and 710 series models are the only
> SATA-connected drives still on the market I know of that pass a serious
> test. The other good models are direct PCI-E storage units, like the
> FusionIO drives.

I don't have the specs to hand, but one of them is a Kingston drive.
Our local supplier is out of 320 series drives, so we were looking for
others; will check out the 710s. It's crazy that so few drives can
actually be trusted.

ChrisA