Re: [gentoo-user] Want to seriously test a NEW hard drive

[Dale]

Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I finally got me a 3Tb drive on the way.  Should be here Wednesday.  I
>> have seen some reviews where it would not work right.  I think some of
>> it may be BIOS related since some BIOS's don't like drives that large.
>> Anyway, I want to test this thing real good to really make sure it is up
>> to the task before putting my data on it.  It's going to be so much
>> data, there is really no way to do back-ups at this point.  Come on, 2
>> to 3Tbs on 4Gb DVDs.  Really?  lol  Maybe a external drive later on but
>> for now, well.
>>
>> I have heard of bonnie and friends.  I also think dd could do some
>> testing too.  Is there any other way to give this a good work and see if
>> it holds up?  Oh, helpful hints with Bonnie would be great too.  I have
>> never used it before.  Maybe someone has some test that is really brutal.
> I wouldn't want to torture the drive, but just make sure it works.
>
> What I do: boot parted magic liveCD, run ATA SECURE ERASE on the drive
> (you probably need to suspend and awaken your machine to unlock the
> drive, the GUI tool in the liveCD does this for you automatically),
> that will do factory reformat/low-level reformat, then run SMART full
> test which can take many hours. If it survives both of those, and
> doesn't make audible clicking noises in the process, I feel confident
> that it is in working order.
>
> Those steps are more important if I'm testing a used or refurbished
> drive, for a new drive you may want to skip the secure erase and only
> do the smart test. If SMART test passes then I don't think there's any
> reason to run badblocks, but you can have it run during mkfs if you
> want reassurance.
>
>

Well, I don't want to force it to fail just for the heck of it.  I just
want to make sure it is not going to fail in the first few months of
use.  The reviews that people have wrote that had problems were
generally either out of the box dead or failed after a few weeks or a
month or so.  I figure if I can run tests that would be about a month or
so of use, then maybe I am OK.  That is my goal.  I just don't want to
get all my data on there and such and then have it go belly up. 

I didn't know you could do low level formats anymore.  Really?  What
package provides that?  Hmmm, I'm thinking about those HOURS spent
formatting a 100Mb drive and then thinking about how long it will take
to do a 3Tb drive.  O_O  I mean really O_O.  LOL 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  It should be here tomorrow. UPS dropped it off at the post office
today. 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!