Recommend HDD Testing software please

[thx1138v2]

I have an older machine that I need to replace the SATA HDDs in. It's a Windows 7 installation and the drives will be Western Digital. Can you recommend software to test the new drives before I make them permanent?

 

[Lafong]

Two standards are:

Crystal Disk Info and Crystal Disk Mark.

You may still be able to find Hitachi Windows Drive Fitness Test (WinDFTSetUp.msi) somewhere at Western Digital's site. It can be used on any spinning drive. Been a while since I used it, but I think it runs directly from Windows rather than a prompt. It gives a SMART report among other things.

There is always checkdisk.

WD should have some sort of a toolbox app as well. I think it is called "Dashboard". Should be at WD support area somewhere.

Some tools will fill the entire drive with zeros as kind of a torture test if you want to go that far. That might take hours, but there should be shorter versions as well.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I like gsmartcontrol. It’s free and open source if I recall. I think they’ve got a portable version. Haven’t used it as often as ssd drives are taking over but it could even give an idea if a drive was failing or possibly in pre failure status.

 

[thx1138v2]

Okay. I've got 3 now that I fell comfortable with. Thanks guys.

 

[kanewolf]

Okay. I've got 3 now that I fell comfortable with. Thanks guys.

A disk that test good today could still fail tomorrow. Testing is not the answer. Backups is the only way to protect your data.

 

[COLGeek]

WD has a tool you can use as well:

Download, Install, Test Drive and Update Firmware Using Western Digital Dashboard

support-en.wd.com

 

[thx1138v2]

A disk that test good today could still fail tomorrow. Testing is not the answer. Backups is the only way to protect your data.

I'm aware of that. That is what these new drives are for - backup. I just want to be sure they are good before using them.

 

[Misgar]

I run a surface read test on all new hand drives with Hard Disk Sentinel to see if they've survived being bashed about in transit. On an 8TB drive this can take 8 to 10 hours.

I also check old drives with HD Sentinel before repurposing them in a new build to weed out drives with slowly increasing surface defects before they turn into bad blocks. Hard Disk Sentinel also provides a number of more thorough write/read tests which take even longer to run.

Some people building TrueNAS RAIDZ1/Z2/Z3 arrays advocate "burning in" new drives for up to 7 days before saving any important data. The level of testing is up to you, but I feel more confident if I run surface scan.