Question Short vs Long HDD Scans?

[accesscpu_]

I'm using Seagate Tools to scan three of my internal hard drives for health (all were purchased new within the last 2-3 years). I've run the "Short Self Test" and "Short Generic Tests" on all three, with everything coming back as passed. I tried to run a "Long Generic Test" on one of the drives, but it's taking forever (and this is one of my relatively smaller drives I have).

Are the long tests really necessary (providing all the short ones have come back as passed)? I'll be using these drives long-term, so want to ensure they're good for the long haul (baring no other unrelated failures in the future).

 

[Hellfire13]

Long tests can take days sometimes and are only possible if the drives are running redundant. If the short tests are good and if there is no visible issue, it should be good enough. You can probably reiterate the health with 3rd party softwires like Hard Disk Sentinel or CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[fzabkar]

A long test will read every sector. A short test will read a small sample of sectors at various locations on the platters.