How do test HDDs

Hardware Hub Storage
1

i would like to test HDDs to makes sure there are not any Platter defects and that it can last through the whole test. 

i was using Spin Rite 6, until i ran in to an error Somewhere near 30%.  apearently the bios not handling the way SpinRite Counts is a thing https://www.grc.com/sr/kb/badbios.htm and my ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2 is effected by it. (i'll be posting over in the "windows forum" on what i have done to try to get it to work as this is the "HDD Forum")

what i liked about spinrite is that it does an indepth scan and process to make sure that all the places of the drive are fine. 

  1. Read the data (and puts it in to ram so it is not lost) If fail at any point go to 7
  2. Then Invert write (flips 1 to 0 and 0 to 1)
  3. then Invert Read (makes sure that the sectors can hold the new charge with out error)
  4. Normal Write (puts the data back the way it found it)
  5. Normal Read (makes sure that the data at the end of this process is still intact)
  6. Moves on to new sector and goes to step 1 for the entire drive (causing EVERY bit on the drive to be wrote as a 0 an 1 in the test)
  7. perform magic to read the sector, put data in free sector then go to step 2

 

i am doing this test on 3x 2TB WD RE4-GP Enterprise drives that i plan on putting in to a 3x mirror (2x active Raid 1 with the 3rd offline in a safe place in case of bad things). 

the drives performed like champ for 6 hours (at the same time, thanks to VMs) until i came up against the mobo problem i did

 

 

what are some other HDD tools that will scan the drives in a similar way?

 

2

https://teksyndicate.com/forum/windows/help-spin-rite-vms-and-bios-error-plz/185763

the other post i promised

3

Sometimes you can run spinrite in a virtual machine if it is not fully supporting your bios. http://technicallyeasy.net/2013/07/how-to-run-spinrite-in-virtualbox/

 

For me, I have 2 old PC's that I use just for spinrite. (both running asus A8V socket 939 motherboards, and 1 running an opteron 170, and another running a AMD athlon 3200+ and 1GB RAM each.

 

Works well because you can load them with drives, then have spinrite deal with them, and if they fix a drive enough to recover data, then I can get extra money from a computer repair :).

 

Other than that, if you are looking for a full windows solution to testing a drive, then back up a few system images to the new drive, then do a few hash checks to see if the data can be read reliably, then after that, use AIDA64 to perform full drive linear read and write test. doing that a few times will help you to spot bad drives early on so that they can be returned while within the 30 day return window where the store will cover shipping.

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For me, since I have been lazy lately, I have been using new drives as a 24/7 security camera DVR (4x 480P cameras and 2x 1080p 30FPS cameras recording nonstop. The constant writing causes the drives to run hot and the work load over a few weeks allows me to see if there is anything weird with the SMART data as well as spot a bad drive since it will likely fail quickly.

 

happened when I purchased an off brand hard drive (sometimes newegg and amazon will have these no name hard drives with decent capacities for really cheap, though the first and only one I bought, died within a week of constant DVR use and I returned it for a refund. (I don't mind cheap drives too much since I like collecting drives for occasional use (though I will never go that cheap again) (I backup everything to a drive, and place it into a fire/ waterproof safe, and just cycle through them when doing a manual backup) using an esata enclosure.

(I do not have full trust in automated backups that can automatically remove older copies because what happens if a sector goes bad and something gets corrupted, and the system overwrites a good copy with the bad copy?, (automated backups for short term use, and the serious backups are done manually every few weeks) (ghetto but works)

 

4

i was using a VM to test the 3 drives i had (the other post i made for this so the mods do not go crazy it) 

 

which version of the Virtual box software were you using?  i am using Virtual Box 4.3.0
(VirtualBox-4.3.0-89960-Win.exe from the previous versions page)
(the 2 versions after that gave the error security error of the first commenter on the post you linked)

5

Why isnt there a VM to stress test 1 drive using 2 other virtual drives ?

 how does an manufacture test there drives for failure. Why cant we replicate this for ourselves.

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  • Why isnt there a VM to stress test 1 drive using 2 other virtual drives ?

not sure what you are getting at here, but i will try to figure it out. 

i have a bootable ISO (Spin Rite 6) that must run from a direct-boot state and must get direct (raw) access to the HDD.  with using a VM to create Virtual Hard drives on a single HDD, this puts the Windows and the VM software in between the HDD and Spinrite.  If there would be a problem with the HDD Windows Exployer and the VM will try to fix the drive before Spin Rite even get to the data.  Spin rite was made specifically to fix and recover data off of a HDD (and supprisingly it also works on SSD even though it is based on completely different tek).

  •  how does an manufacture test there drives for failure. Why cant we replicate this for ourselves.

manufactures do not really need a way to fix drives that fail. they just make new drives to replace the broken ones. 

well SpinRite is the best software i have found for fixing HDDs.  other have (to put it nicely) "tried" to give the features that SpinRite has (the high level description listed above), but have failed. 

 Western Digital has their "Digital Lifeguard" software that doen't really do 'data lifeguarding' like you would expect it to.  it only does a read which can only fix small errors with the drive surface and a "0" over of the drive and doesn't make sure that ever sector is a 0 when it is done.  spinrite rites (on level 4 and 5) every sector with a 1 and a 0 and makes sure that every sector was able to maintain it's charge. 

7

Personally I use HD Tune, just a habit, I suppose. It isn't the greatest by any means, but it gets the job done. Tells me really everything I need to know.