Testing a new hard drive bought

SaberX on 27/08/2014 - 00:31

Hi guys,

Got a new seagate 2TB 2.5" Expansion and the transcend storejet 25m3 2TB 2.5" recently, both from the amazon sales.

JUst wondering, I've taken an interest in how to test external hdds (and any other storage e.g. memory cards) when they arrive, and was basically told to use one of the following to read SMART data, however I was also wondering if there is any practicality for programs (and if so please recommend) that read/write test data to hard drives to ensure they're working, e.g. not damaged in-transit while shipping:

-Crystal Disk Info
-Speccy
-HD Tune.

I was then told to look at the following SMART attributes.

Have a look at the S.M.A.R.T statistics with those programs above and check the following attributes regularly:

Reallocated Sectors Count
Reallocation Event Count
Current Pending Sector Count
Uncorrectable Sector Count
UltraDMA CRC Error Count

Just wondering if anyone has anything to add. Is checking SMART data from the above 3 programs sufficient for picking up a dodgy hard drive just bought, and to monitor existing ones prior to data being lost from possible failure?

Otherwise if not, can you please elaborate? E.g. is there programs to do test read/writes?

Secondly I've held off on transferring anything to these hard drives yet until the above is answered. But are you able to test an empty hard drive, or do you ideally need data transferred first before you can gauge how the SMART data and whether the drive is working ok?

THanks for any help!

Computing

Comments

  • elusive on 27/08/2014 - 03:40

    What you're looking for is known as a burn-in test. I'm not familiar with any programs that do this, but they do exist. The theory is, since HDDs fail on the bathtub curve (lots when new and old, not much in the middle ~3 years), a burn-in test will weed out some of the ones that will fail early.

    Never trust a single HDD. They can fail entirely without warning. Always have a backup. SMART can provide an indication of impending failure, but failures can happen without any SMART warnings as well. Also, SMART generally needs some data moved around before it will see any problems with the disk - the only thing it's useful for on a brand new drive is to make sure it's actually new, by checking power on hours and power up cycles.

  • [Deactivated] on 27/08/2014 - 09:10

    What is the reason for wanting to test? If reliability is your what you are after you really need a RAID setup to have redundancy.

    Truth is, harddrives fail.

  • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 27/08/2014 - 09:18

    As someone with a 21tb arrray and have had primary HDDs fail in the past, ALWAYS keep backups. This is particular easy these days with things like dropbox, gmail, crashplan and also how cheap external usb, external HDD's, and DVD/BD media are.

    SMART data is good to "keep an eye" on things, but HDDs can fail completely without warning.

  • SaberX on 28/08/2014 - 23:35

    THanks for the feedback guys - I know SMART data isn't a surefire way to be safe, and you should just have a backup of backups.. but I was hoping to at least understand whether I could test SMART data now when i've received the HDD, or need to start loading data before the SMART data will start to record/make meaningful sense?

    Likewise as poster above mentioned, a burn in program or one that tests read/write speeds, and other accuracy of data copied into hdd to see /look for bad sectors, signs etc then that would be great. Any ideas?

    Or is it best to just copy and paste items in and then just use it? Would really prefer to use a program to test though , while I might make backups it'd be good to know before hand whether somethings wroking right or wrong.

    I did buy two 2 tbs for exactly the backup of backup situation however.

    • [Deactivated] on 29/08/2014 - 09:15

      I've got a 500GB Seatgate drive with several critcal SMART errors, been running for over 18months in this condition with no problems. And I use it as a torrent drive so it has a significant amount of reads and writes too

      Not sure on the reliability of SMART errors after this.

      • SaberX on 12/09/2014 - 21:38

        DId you just use the seagate tools?

        I thought it was more commmon that people actually ran "burn in test" software as elusive put it above…

        So it seems most just use their drive and occasionally (if any) check the SMART Data?

        THought there would be a more active passion in monitoring/testing hard drives, seems even usb and SD cards for cameras get tested more for buyers than what it seems the HDD community does? Or maybe not everyone is saying everything.

        • scrimshaw on 13/09/2014 - 13:21

          HDDs and other mechanical / electronic stuff follow what is called a 'bathtub curve' — it's explained here. It's explained by a previous poster earlier.

          Some people perform HDD burn in testing on the hard drives and they do so because they want to knock out the possibility that they got a hard drive which would fail in it's early stages ('infant mortality' section of the bathtub curve). The burn in test can simulate several months of usage on a HDD in as little as a few hours. If the drive doesn't fail during the burn in test, you have a lower probability of failure than if you had not tested the drive to begin with.

          After that, you have to rely on the not-so-reliable SMART numbers to tell you how healthy the drive is. So apart from the initial HDD stress test there is not much you can do afterwards to ensure that you won't have a drive that crashes and burns unexpectedly.

          There is some discussion here as to how drives can be tested regularly to check it's health
          http://serverfault.com/questions/309113/how-should-i-burn-in…
          Typically they just do a burn in test and check the results periodically.

          Explanation on what the infant mortality reliability issue is and why burn-in is used to address this issue

          http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=427483…

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