Aida 64 and Everest both have stress test/burn test for hard drives, I don´t know what it actually does, but atleast it warms the hard drives up quite a bit.

DBAN would be perfect for this. I use it as a reliability test for drives I receive used all the time, and also to test when my own new (and old!) drives seem to become questionable. It will not tell you about every single problem like a drive sometimes not registering when the system is powered on, but it is the best accelerated usage program you're going to find for standard PC hardware.

Thanks for input!

I'll look into what exactly Aida/Everest offers.

Not sure if I got that DBAN correctly though.
Is it this thing ?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN

If so, how would any 'test' results manifest themselves ?
(inability to write to the drive, or something ?)

I use Bart's Stuff Test

bestemor wrote:

Not sure if I got that DBAN correctly though. Is it this thing ?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN […]
Show full quote

Not sure if I got that DBAN correctly though.
Is it this thing ?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBAN

If so, how would any 'test' results manifest themselves ?
(inability to write to the drive, or something ?)

Yes, that's it. It verifies everything, and if it gets any issues it tells you with a count of how many, per drive, and it can do multiple drives simultaneously.

I just got a couple fujitsu 8.4gb drives as part of a p2 parts purchase, and I tested them with dban as is my custom. Sure enough, true to the fujitsus of that era, at the last 1/3 of the drive, the errors started piling up like mad.

How about a full format and then look to see if bad sectors are found. Also check SMART data for large numbers of uncorrectable / reallocated / pending sectors. The aforementioned AIDA is good for that.

You can also grab Ultimate Boot CD, which is loaded with utilities (incl DBAN), and run the drive manufacturer's disk tests.

The difference between a simple format and DBAN is DBAN is far more thorough. If it works for DBAN you can be assured the drive is AOK, for a format... I've had no 'bad sectors' of drives I know have issues.

jaqie wrote:

The difference between a simple format and DBAN is DBAN is far more thorough. If it works for DBAN you can be assured the drive is AOK, for a format... I've had no 'bad sectors' of drives I know have issues.

Sounds useful.

I wonder how it compares to the full drive scan that the manufacturer utilities do with the usual "long test".

I have found errors in drives with DBAN which the SMART tests do not even see, but yes, the long test (read/write test across entire drive with timing of write and read) is far more useful than a simple format.

I tend to run these tests mainly as a way to stress the entire drive surface and then go look to see if it has triggered any drive remapping events (which SMART notes). If a format notes a literal bad sector, that's really bad, but if the drive is even remapping sectors that is warning by itself. AFAIK HDDs have built in redundancy to hide these problems but there is a limit to this area and it also can indicate failing electrical aspects if the count is increasing.

I tend to use DBAN to wipe and then go and look for remap events. This is mainly if I plan to sell a drive. Sounds like a good idea even for new purchases though.

Yep.

If you want to stress the entire drive surface, use DBAN. seriously, it's far more of a test than just a whole smear of 0 strings. It's a similar difference between the boot memory test in computers and memtest86.

The only problem with DBAN is the time involved 🤣

swaaye wrote:

The only problem with DBAN is the time involved 🤣

Then use the built in secure erase if your drive supports it.

*Always do ATA secure erase from the CLI NOT the GUI

1. Exit X
2. sudo passwd password
3. switch to su
4. Type in "pm-suspend" to suspend the computer
5. Resume from suspend
6. Type in "hdparm -I /dev/sdx" to verify that HD is NOT frozen
7. Type in hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass pass /dev/sdx (to set the HD password)
8. Type in time hdparm --user-master u --security-erase pass /dev/sdx (to time how long it takes to wipe the HD)

and then check SMART info after.

http://www.dban.org/node/34

So technically you are not really checking the "entire" hd if you use DBAN.

Not all drives use an engineering cylinder, but for those that do you are absolutely correct. As for remapped sectors, do you really want to try to put those back into 'production use' after they have proven unreliable once?

Thing is, not everyone uses linux as an OS, and not all will let you su, along with a myriad of other messes that you can get into with trying to give general advice with all the different ways the different linux flavours do things.

I use ATA secure erase whenever I can but a surprising number of drives don't support it and then DBAN is the choice.

For secure erase my favorite tool is the simple DOS based HDDERASE. It is a little picky about controllers but it's not really an issue as I have an extra PC that I use with it.

Spinrite.