R.K.Orion

Q: Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

I've been tasked to sell some of our inventory of old Macs. This include some PowerPC based PowerBooks, a few G5 dual core Power Macs, but mostly they're going to be MacBook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's. I'm paying most attention to the Intel stuff because most of the PPC stuff is just getting a little too old. NOTE: I am not on here to announce a sale. Please do not ask me where, when, and if the units will be sold. I don't want this thread turning into a spam-fest!

 

Most of the Intel units have CoreDuo processessors, some of the mini's I believe actually have Core Solo. These are all being upgraded to new systems, as you might guess. All units have their original software because when these are given to an employee to use we take the software and lock it in a file cabinet, which prevents them from losing it or doing something else with it. We have fairly tight control over our machines. I do not believe any of these units are capable of running Lion or later OSes due to their processors. Most systems are running Leopard or Snow Leopard.

 

In any case, we can do basic hardware tests on the units using AHT, but AHT seems to have little or no testing capability for doing surface scans on hard drives or optical drives. These are, ironically, the most likely things that will break. We want it verified these are in working order because we will be offering a limited warranty on them.

 

What's available for testing hard drives and optical drives?

 

As an FYI, having Apple do this testing is out of the question due to cost.

Posted on Sep 28, 2013 6:29 PM

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Q: Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

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  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Mar 21, 2014 10:09 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 10:09 AM in response to ZV137

    Most people deal with that problem with a fan control program that can be downloaded for free.

     

    Anyone know if this type of setup was limited to just a series of iMac's, or does it occur in other systems as well. I only remember reading about it for a certain yeard.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Mar 21, 2014 10:16 AM in response to CaptH
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 21, 2014 10:16 AM in response to CaptH

    Fan control programs can generally only set a higher Base speed for fans. From there, they will coninue to speed up based on measured temperatures.

     

    If you could actually turn the fans down, you risk destroying your expensive Mac due to excess heat.

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion Mar 21, 2014 6:44 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 6:44 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Are you guys talking about stuff like this:

     

    http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/

     

    and this:

     

    http://www.hddfancontrol.com/

     

    Here's an article I found on this problem:

     

    http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57597558-263/potentially-fix-imac-fan-blari ng-after-hard-drive-upgrade/

     

     

    I'm under the impression most of the people running into this problem have it because they put an SSD in, which is why the top link is named "SSD Fan Control"

  • by HuntsMan75,

    HuntsMan75 HuntsMan75 Mar 22, 2014 11:17 AM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 22, 2014 11:17 AM in response to R.K.Orion

    There's another one out there that has a name and maybe diagram of a lizard or a gecko for its logo. It's supposed to be be good. A friend of mine use it on his iMac when he put in an SSD.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Apr 3, 2014 11:06 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Apr 3, 2014 11:06 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    A list of links to fan control stuff, for those interested:

     

    http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/

    http://www.hddfancontrol.com/

    http://www.eidac.de/

     

    As far as I'm concerned anyone using one of these is doing so at their own risk. I'm sure there are others out there...just make sure they work

  • by HuntsMan75,

    HuntsMan75 HuntsMan75 May 19, 2014 11:02 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 19, 2014 11:02 AM in response to ZV137

    I'm reasonably certain the fan control programs that people are typically using in their systems are monitoring internal temperature sensors. It would make no sense to do otherwise.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 May 21, 2014 11:24 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (54 points)
    May 21, 2014 11:24 AM in response to ZV137

    I haven't seen anyone complain about their 2009 iMac after installing a fan control application.

     

    What I'm not sure about is whether or not the applcation was written just to adjust this particular issue or whether they're really intended to allow a user to control/turn on/off fans at will. If it's the latter I can see Grant's point.

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper May 21, 2014 5:29 PM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (64 points)
    May 21, 2014 5:29 PM in response to R.K.Orion

    It seems to me that no one ever addressed the idea of testing optical drive units. Since many of you were in the "hard drive" thread and we (at least me, anyway) learned that many of the problems with optical drives were actually related to poor quality media, it got me to thinking about testing.

     

    Other than reading and writing to good media, I don't think there would be another way to test optical drives for the following reasons:

     

    1. If a failure is detected, is it the media or is it the optical drive heads or mechanics causing the problem.
    2. You surely can't do a surface scan on unitialized media. You'd get nothing but errors.

     

    A hard drive lives in its own little private world, but an optical drive is having media installed and removed, with some of it of varying quality and variable cleanliness.

     

    I would have to assume the best test regimin would be to create a good quality optical test CD/DVD and use it as a read source for tests, and then for drives with write capability, actually burn one using good media. Cross reference the test results with a known good CD/DVD and verify the results.

     

    If anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to chime in or correct me.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 May 22, 2014 11:38 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper
    Level 1 (54 points)
    May 22, 2014 11:38 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper

    I'm reasonably convinced that you can get reliable optical media, but the laser on the actual drive and it's short life, IMHO, still make it more or less to unreliable to be taken seriously. What are you supposed to do? Have a tally sheet sitting next to a computer informing you of how many hours the optical drive has spent writing data and then just replace it?

     

    I think I'm going to have to say that testing optical drives shouldnlt even be   a consideration, just assume they're bad and if they're not, they soon will be.

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH May 23, 2014 12:31 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (59 points)
    May 23, 2014 12:31 AM in response to ZV137

    I would have to agree with the life of the lasers being rather short in life, but why do the lives of the ultra thin optical drives seem to last even shorter? Is it just that they can't take the impact, since they're typically in laptops and banged around alot, but I had a Mac Mini years ago and the DVD+/-RW didn't even last more than maybe 20 or 30 writes, and that's certainly not thousands of hours.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 May 23, 2014 12:19 PM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (54 points)
    May 23, 2014 12:19 PM in response to CaptH

    If you've ever pulled one out of a unit, the slim types are housed in fairly thin layers of metal, whereas the full sized units are typically on rigid frames. It amazes me the slim types even work at all.

  • by HuntsMan75,

    HuntsMan75 HuntsMan75 May 25, 2014 11:57 PM in response to MrJavaDeveloper
    Level 1 (14 points)
    May 25, 2014 11:57 PM in response to MrJavaDeveloper

    Why bother with optical drives at all? I know from a few threads that in some cases, given decent media is used, optical media can be reliable, but they aren't even available on most Apple systems now, you can do redundant backups with hard drives, and you can transfer your critical stuff to iCloud or whatever other online service you want to use to keep them safe.

     

    I would surely think that most online backup companies have enough brains to not lose your data, but if you trust yourself to perform archaic and time consuming backups using optical drives, then you're responsible if that data gets corrupted, lost, damaged, or whatever. Try telling that to the IRS, guys!

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper May 31, 2014 11:40 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (64 points)
    May 31, 2014 11:40 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    The tail end of this thread:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/25802819#25802819

     

    goes into the why's and why-not's of optical media. If you get archive quality media they can apparently be pretty good at storing old stuff.

     

    I've got about 10-20GB or old source code that just been getting bounced from machine to machine as I upgrade, change drives, or move to a newer system. I don't want to keep track of this stuff and I don't want it eating up hard drive space any longer. Optical if done right sounds like a good solution.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jun 2, 2014 2:09 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jun 2, 2014 2:09 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    The whole issue is confusing. I'm apprehensive about optical media but for long term use, what else is there? Has anyone anywhere ever seen a hard drive last over 10 years? I'd like to know the answer to that question.

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Jun 2, 2014 7:46 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 9 (60,909 points)
    Desktops
    Jun 2, 2014 7:46 AM in response to ZV137

    There is no good answer to your question.

     

    The Library of Congress in the US wrestled with that question a while ago, and decided the best universal archive medium was ...

     

    ... paper.

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