Preventative check server HDD for failure.

[edutech4schools]

What do you use to check for server hdd issues before they become apparent?

I noticed at one school a cron job running each night and inspecting the hdd but have no idea what or how it was doing it.

[SYNACK]

Probably looking at the S.M.A.R.T status of the drives, these are a series of inbuilt counters and tests built into the drives firmware that can provide an indication that the drive may fail soon. Windows Vista/2008 and above run these checks automaticly and will helpfully inform you of imminant failure. There will be a command or utility somewhere almost certainly built into most linux distributions that does the same thing which you could run in a cron job as above.