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05-12-2005, 03:03 AM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Canada
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 70
Rep:
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testing harddrive reliability?
Here is my situation:
I have an old Western Digital 80GB drive (WD800JB) that I removed from one of my machines when it seemed to be acting up. IO activity when accessing the drive would sometimes halt for half a minute. I copied my important data to a new drive ASAP and removed the WD drive.
I was recently setting up an old machine and looking through my hardware for a harddrive I can put in it and found the WD 80GB.
My problem is that I dont know if I can trust the drive. I am looking for a good way to test it.
So far I have used the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic disk from their website to run a full test and then to zero the drive and both worked fine without error.
I have not yet tested to see what SMART says about the drive as the old machine I have it in now doesnt support SMART in the BIOS.
Is there a better way to test for drive stability? I understand that drives fail all the time so I cant be "guaranteed" that it will be fine and all that, I just want some reassurance that it is currently OK before I start setting up a system on it.
Thanks in advance.
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05-12-2005, 09:08 PM
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#2
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LQ Guru
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: San Jose, CA
Distribution: Debian, Arch
Posts: 8,507
Rep: 
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Well, I would try (under whatever Linux you'd like on this box: Knoppix if you aren't running Linux there) running the 'badblocks' check. I would also try 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/DRIVE' and so forth. Just put it through its paces 
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05-13-2005, 12:38 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Canada
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 70
Original Poster
Rep:
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Thanks for the suggestions.
The Western Digital utility did a badblock scan and i used it to zero the drive. Both worked fine.
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05-13-2005, 12:59 AM
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#4
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LQ Guru
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: San Jose, CA
Distribution: Debian, Arch
Posts: 8,507
Rep: 
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Then I'd say there is no evidence that your hard drive is likely to fail soon... unless of course, you hear weird noises or something like that. 
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05-13-2005, 01:12 AM
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#5
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LQ Guru
Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Sparta, NC USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04
Posts: 5,141
Rep:
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Mine have always made clicking noises and giving i/o error messages when they failed, except for the one I dropped on the floor. 
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05-13-2005, 01:44 AM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Canada
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 70
Original Poster
Rep:
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Well I will start building a system on it and see how it goes. Nothing important goes on it for now.
I also have an older 40GB Maxtor that started making noises. Maybe I should drag that out and see how it is too....
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