Running a Patrol Read

A patrol read periodically verifies all sectors of the drives connected to a controller, including the system reserved area in the RAID configured drives. You can run a patrol read for all RAID levels and for all hot spare drives. A patrol read is initiated only when the controller is idle for a defined period and has no other background activities.

You can set the patrol read properties and start the patrol read operation, or you can start the patrol read without changing the properties.

1.	Click a controller icon in the left panel.

2.	Select Go To > Controller > Set Patrol Read Properties, or right-click on a controller and select Set Patrol Read Properties from the menu.

The Patrol Read - Set properties window appears, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 89. Patrol Read - Set Properties

3.	Select an operation mode for patrol read from the following options:

Automatic: Patrol read runs automatically at the time interval you specify on this window.

Manual: Patrol read runs only when you manually start it, by selecting Start Patrol Read from the controller options window.

Disabled: Patrol read does not run.

4.	(Optional) Specify a maximum count of drives to include in the patrol read.

The count must be a number from 1 to 255.

5.	(Optional) Click virtual drives in the list under the heading Virtual Drive to include in the patrol read and click Add > or click Add All >> to include all of the virtual drives.

6.	(Optional) Change the frequency at which the patrol read runs.

The default frequency is weekly (168 hours), which is suitable for most configurations. The other options are hourly, daily, and monthly.

NOTE  Leave the patrol read frequency and other patrol read settings at the default values to achieve the best system performance. If you decide to change the values, record the original default values here so you can restore them later, if necessary: Patrol Read Frequency: ___________________, Continuous Patrolling: Enabled/Disabled, Patrol Read Task Rate: ___________________.

7.	(Optional) Set Patrol Read to run at a specific time.

The default setting for the patrol read is to start when you click OK on this window. To change the default setting so that the patrol read starts at a specific time, follow these steps (otherwise, skip this step and proceed to step 8):

a.	Deselect the Perform Patrol Read when I press OK check box.

b.	Select the month, year, day, and time to start the patrol read.

8.	Click OK to enable your patrol read selections.

NOTE  Patrol read does not report on its progress while it is running. The patrol read status is reported only in the event log.

9.	Click Go to enable these Patrol Read options.

To start a patrol read without changing the patrol read properties, follow these steps:

1.	Click a controller icon in the left panel of the MegaRAID Storage Manager main menu screen.

2.	Select Go To > Controller > Start Patrol Read in the menu bar, or right-click a controller and select Start Patrol Read from the menu.

3.	When prompted, click Yes to confirm that you want to start a patrol read.