I have some hard drives that I would like to use to set up a RAID array. I've gone through the exercise a couple of times with mixed results and I'm not sure where I am having problems. The problems seem to point to the drives, but other evidence seems to acquit them.

I'd like to know what is the best way, if any, to exercise a hard drive is such a way as to determine how useable it might be. I'm thinking of repeated read-writes to the entire disc and watching for errors. I'm surprised not to have found a simple routine in my searching.

Depending on the drives, you might be able to use smartmontools.