How to break in a hard drive?

[nightanole]

Welp i got my new baby, wd3200ks. I was wondering how to break it in before i risk my life with it. I was thinking maybe a copy of spinrite i have that writes each bit 4 times on every sector of the disk. Im a seagate man myself but they have been slow compared to my buddies hitachi and wd setups. So the price was right...

Anyways i was wondering how i could test out the thing. My last wd(2002) worked great till it was about half full, then click click read error and corruption. I managed to get everything off of it before the bad sectors, but i want to test this one out before i chance 320 gigs. This will be a first line hd ( data goes there first, before going to either dvd backup or 2 port-O-gigs) so its gota last long enough to get the data off.

Sorry but i have maxtor and seagate on speed dial on my ups account. I eat atleast 1 a year. I also survived the ibm 75gxp's.

[insanarchist]

Why don't you just copy the data over? (Key word being 'copy') and keep the other copy for a week or two...

Just a thought.

[nightanole]

Cuz i dont have 320 gigs worth of crap yet. Well i might if i took allmost all the data off my port-o-gigs. And the port-o-gigs data is backed up on dvd so that might work...

[unhappy_mage]

Try the linux "badblocks" program. Boot a Knoppix disk and run "badblocks -w /dev/hda" - hda means primary master, hdb for primary slave, hdc for secondary master, etc - this will perform a read/write test on the entire disk, so don't leave anything important on it! Make sure you have the right disk first by running "fdisk -l"; it'll print a list of all the partitions on all your disks.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072 (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=150072&tm=33)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)

[Bullitt]

Try the linux "badblocks" program. Boot a Knoppix disk and run "badblocks -w /dev/hda" - hda means primary master, hdb for primary slave, hdc for secondary master, etc - this will perform a read/write test on the entire disk, so don't leave anything important on it! Make sure you have the right disk first by running "fdisk -l"; it'll print a list of all the partitions on all your disks.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072 (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=150072&tm=33)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)


Better yet, since you suggested knoppix, unplug your original HDD from your system COMPLETELY and just leave your new one plugged up for Knoppix to beat on.

[DougLite]

Always a good call to unplug your old data drive when messing with a new one (installing Windows, zero filling, etc)

[DatHak512]

Oh, man is this an old thread! :D

Does writing to all the sectors of a new HDD really do anything for it other than just figure out if there's any damage to the surface of the drive?
http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/514.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=514)

[unhappy_mage]

Does writing to all the sectors of a new HDD really do anything for it other than just figure out if there's any damage to the surface of the drive?
Not really. I don't bother doing that; I just don't store anything important exclusively on that drive until I've broken it in for a month or so. But I guess if you're paranoid about it, it can't hurt. And paranoia is a reasonable policy when it comes to data ;)

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)