Butterfly seeking test mode

[ATP_B]

I've been testing 2 SSDs where I only select "butterfly seeking" test mode only that resulted in an error. But that is not my problem.

When I run the test using "Default (Cyclic)" test mode, only one of the SSD received the same error. Apparently, for one of the SSD the test skipped the "butterfly seeking" test, but the other SSD it ran this test.

So my question is does the software read the internal setting of the SSD to determine to skip this test, e.g. identify device info?

I've checked the commands sent to the SSD, "SMART read" was issued, so I'm wondering if specific bits in the SMART data structure enabled this type of behavior?

Thanks!

[Ian (PassMark)]

Butterfly seeking works by detecting the hard disk geometry (number of cylinders etc) and then seeking between cylinder 0 and cylinder X and back to cylinder 0. While it can be used on some SSDs, the SSD needs to provide (in this case meaningless) disk "geometry" information.

The test is skipped in a number of cases, mainly related to not being able to get disk geometry information. The cases are: Ealier than Vista, not administrator, drive type unknown or floppy/optical drive. None of these cases relate to SMART data.

[ATP_B]

Thanks for the reply.

Could you specify where the "geometry" information is stored on the SSD? Is it in the Identify device information table?

[Ian (PassMark)]

The geometry information is for a Hard disk. Some SSDs supply meaningless information for some of this geometry information, because for example an SSD does not have cylinders. Specifically the information is:
- Disk size
- Cylinders
- MediaType
- TracksPerCylinder
- SectorsPerTrack
- BytesPerSector

[ATP_B]

I basically compared the two SSD's identify device information specifically the "# of cylinders", "number of logical heads" and "number of logical sectors" where both are identical.

I'm just confused as to why the software decided to skip this test for one SSD while the other it ran the test when both devices provided the same geometry information.

[Ian (PassMark)]

If you turn on Level 2 trace logging and send me the *.trace file showing the skipped test, then this should provide more information.

To turn on Level 2 trace logging, select Preferences->Logging, check "Turn automatic logging on", under Report detail set "Trace file detail level" to Activity trace 2. Under Periodically log summary reports during a test, set the Logging interval to 1. Please send me the *.trace files produced.

Our support email address is shown here:
http://www.passmark.com/support/index.htm

[ATP_B]

Email sent
thank you

[Ian (PassMark)]

I did not realize that you were using the very old v5.3 of BurnInTest. Unless your company has a current 12 month support agreement for v5.3 then we no longer support V5.3.

From your log file:
> LOG NOTE: 2012-06-28 12:26:09, Disk ,
> GetVolumeExtents: Unable to open \\?\Volume{482f2dc6-c0c4-11e1-9352-806e6f6e6963}
> (err: 5)

Error 5 means "Access is denied.". So the disk could not be opened to get the drive information.

I would try the evaluation of V7.0 BurnInTest to see if that helps:
http://www.passmark.com/download/bit_download.htm

[LVZh]

Good Day.
I can see the same errors (Butterfly with SSD) under BIT 8.1.1016 -- every 20-30 minutes.
There are no any error under BIT 8.1.1014.

P.S. We don't use BIT 8.1.1015, because it has some problems with start from command prompt.

[Tim (PassMark)]

The butterfly test is now skipped when an SSD/NVMe drive is detected as the test is not really relevant to this types of disks (as all the disk geometry for this drives, if even available, is faked by the device driver).

You can stop the message being displayed in the log by changing the type from WARNING/INFORMATION to NONE in the BITErrorClassification.txt file.

In the next build (8.1.1017) we have changed this so it is INFORMATION by default so it will be logged as a message in the log file only rather than a warning.

[Tim (PassMark)]

Build 1017 has now been released to change this to INFORMATION by default.

[Timmy]

Can someone teach me how to run HDD butterfly test in linux enviroment?.

[Tim (PassMark)]

The butterfly test was never implemented for the Linux version of BurnInTest (and now as it is mostly redundant there are no plans to add it).