Hard Disk Monitoring

I have a dedicated server running linux with 2 TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 drives on RAID1. We've been having the odd strange issues with files and I thought I'd run a test.

last week, I ran Smart 'smartctl -x /dev/sda" on the drives and noticed that one of them had a high Raw_Read_Error_Rate of 65537, but then this week that number has doubled to 131073. So when I spoke to the web hosting company they said to run HDSentinel and that came back saying the disk was perfectly healthy.

I cannot see any linux commands that run extended tests in HD Sentinel.

Any advice would be approciated.

I can confirm that alone those numbers do not indicate anything. The name "error rate" confirms that the number is NOT an "error count" so alone the fact that this number changes, does not cause troubles. For many hard disk drives, that value can increase/decrease as well.

Yes, generally testing is a good way to reveal possible problems - or confirm that the disk status is surely perfect and stable. I always recommend disk testing, especially if we're not sure and/or there is something "suspicious".

I'm afraid the Linux version of Hard Disk Sentinel does not offer any tests: the Linux version can only detect and report the actual status, including possible problems. I'd check what it displays, does it show 100% Perfect hard disk health - or does it report any possible (even minor) issues and/or lower health.

You can use the Windows version of Hard Disk Sentinel to perform the tests, as suggested at Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> Hard disk health is low or recently changed or I just installed a new (used) hard disk. How can I perform a deep analysis?
https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests

You can connect the hard disk drives to a Windows PC (for example by an USB dock/enclosure) and test that way with the Windows version of Hard Disk Sentinel: even if the file system is not recognised by Windows (so the files/folders are not available to read/write) you can perform the tests (for example the 100% safe Disk menu -> Short self test, Disk menu -> Extended self test, Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test) and the re-connect the drive to the Linux system.