Testing Harddrives Pending "Death"

[Desert63]

Hello all. I read the last year of posts and there are similar questions to mine, but none I think directly. I have half a dozen or more harddives stored in my closet (temperature and shock proof stored) and am concerned about them going bad. I know all about benchmarking harddrives, but is there a way within a benchmark or other program to test for pending "crash", or data loss, or just generally not working anymore? Essentially a test against reliability and aging? As opposed to what I have done for the last 30 years and just wait to be "surprised" by a massive data loss? I have become good at sound, feel, power on noises, etc, but I hope there is a diag by now. These are all spindle drives, non SSD. Thanks all!

 

[DelJo63]

Basically, NO. The SMART stats are the best indicators and STILL there can be cases where the drive fails.

The two classes of failure are mechanical and electrical. The latter are rather binary -- go/nogo. The mechanical failures are more random and environmental.

I would test each HD via SMART and record the full set of results for each, saving the report with each drive and the date taken.

 

[Desert63]

Thank you! I thought so, but the reminder on SMART is what I needed, thanks!

 

[Kshipper]

Lets not forget about stiction. I had this problem first hand. I purchase quite a few Seagate hard drives for laptop repair. In fact, a whole master case of them thinking that I would be in good shape to do laptop repair for a while. The adoption rate of SSD hard drives was so fast I was left holding the bag. SSD drives were far superior for repair and I was using those and I didn't worry about my last 3 drives, still sealed in the master carton (which is made out of styrofoam) and each drive still sealed in it anti static bag. When it came time that I was being asked to do a repair as cheaply as I could do it, I went in and grabbed a new drive and it was dead as a doornail. I opened the next one...dead...the next one dead. I put in a SSD and it was fine.

I stacked the drives nearby for re-checking and all 3 could not be read by my own computer even though I had them powered up in a USB dock. They were gone. I hung on to them too long (years). Well out of warranty. I wrote them off and put them in recycling and I stopped keeping spinning hard drives in stock because of that. They are metal and they rust I guess. No other way to explain it.

 

[SNGX1275]

Lets not forget about stiction. I had this problem first hand. I purchase quite a few Seagate hard drives for laptop repair. In fact, a whole master case of them thinking that I would be in good shape to do laptop repair for a while. The adoption rate of SSD hard drives was so fast I was left holding the bag. SSD drives were far superior for repair and I was using those and I didn't worry about my last 3 drives, still sealed in the master carton (which is made out of styrofoam) and each drive still sealed in it anti static bag. When it came time that I was being asked to do a repair as cheaply as I could do it, I went in and grabbed a new drive and it was dead as a doornail. I opened the next one...dead...the next one dead. I put in a SSD and it was fine.

I stacked the drives nearby for re-checking and all 3 could not be read by my own computer even though I had them powered up in a USB dock. They were gone. I hung on to them too long (years). Well out of warranty. I wrote them off and put them in recycling and I stopped keeping spinning hard drives in stock because of that. They are metal and they rust I guess. No other way to explain it.

man thats weird dude, how could rust happen in a vacuum bag? but I guess the only other way is just bad luck.