"Dave (from the UK)" <see-my-signature@southminster-branch-line.org.uk> wrote:
> I bought a supposedly new SCSI disk on eBay (Seagate ST3146854LC, 147 GB
> 15k rpm). According to the format command on Solaris 10, this has 633
> primary defects and 18 grown defects. Does the fact there are grown
> defects indicate it has been used? I'm very suspicious it is not new at
> all.

Any number larger than zero in the grown defect list would me make
suspicious.

Most of the SCSI drives I work with have an empty grown defect list (or
maybe up to 5 entries on just a few drives). If the number is not zero I
monitor the defect list for some time to see if it is still growing.
Sometimes I also run a surface analysis (format -> analyze -> read).

A steadily growing defect list is a good sign for the drive to fail
in the near future.

In the SCSI inquiry the build date is also encoded (four digits WWYY -
(W)eek (Y)ear). So run "format -e" -> scsi -> inquiry to see when the
disk was built. A "new" disk should be no older than 6 months.

Other things to try: get the number of power-on-hours from the drive.
You could try the smartmontools
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
they will also work on SCSI drives on Solaris/SPARC. Maybe you can get
this information from this tool.

--
Daniel