Testing hardware

In this section, we'll discuss methods for testing potentially faulty hardware by looking at SMART and disk-testing software, as well as physically troubleshooting RAM issues.

Working with disks can be exceptionally risky, and you should always make sure that you have working backups before you start anything that might be hazardous to your data.

Getting ready

Here, we're mostly going to be using the Vagrant box we've created, but you may also want to take a look at Memtest86+ from http://www.memtest.org/, which I mention for memory testing.

Connect to your VM and install smartmontools:

$ vagrant ssh
$ sudo yum install -y smartmontools hdparm

You might also want to download the latest Memtest86...