SCSI Toolbox :: Newsletter - April 2003

IN THIS EDITION
Overland Storage chooses SCSI Toolbox to write custom software
Ask Dr. SCSI - Is my disk drive going bad?
Do you know? - where your media has been?
Did you know? - That your disk drive may be working, but just barely?




Overland Storage Press Release
Overland Storage (www.overlandstorage.com) has awarded a contract to SCSI Toolbox LLC to provide an end-user installation and testing tool. The tool, called "Technician On a Disk" will help Overland customers install their tape libraries, as well as troubleshoot problems.

Overland Storage is a leading manufacturer of tape library systems.

SCSI Toolbox (www.scsitoolbox.com) is a software company which specializes in SCSI, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, ATA, & SATA test products.

SCSI Toolbox LLC produces the SCSItoolbox software package, as well as providing custom test solutions to the mass storage peripheral market.






Ask Dr. SCSI - Is my disk drive going bad?

Q. "Is there a way to tell if my disk drive is going bad in the Toolbox?"

A. The Sequential Defect Map Test will read every block on your drive, and will show you any extra effort that the drive had to make in order to deliver your data correctly. Did it need to use ECC? Did it have to use retries? Were negative or positive offsets required? Up to twelve types of correction methods are shown by this test, with a counter for each method.

If your drive isn't having an easy time reading data today, it may not be able to at all tomorrow!







Do you know? - where your media has been?
You can know this, and more by using the VolSer function in the Jukebox Move Media command. Simply enter the Element Address you are interested in (in the Source field), then click the VolSer button.

Your drive type, media type, access bit, source valid bit, and source address are all displayed. If the source valid bit is set, then the source address tells what element your piece of media came from. Mother will always find out where you've been, and with the VolSer command she'll know where your media has been too!