What's your go-to harddisk surface scan tool?

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DPI

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I'm curious what everyone's favorite harddisk surface scan tool is.

Whenever I receive a new drive, before I start committing data to it I normally run badblocks with the -wvs switch (destructive) via the PartedMagic bootdisk, and let that run for a day or so. But I noticed that with 5TB harddisks, badblocks bombs out with an error since it only accepts an int32 value for start and end blocks. So I'm looking for another tool that will do a full write/verify similar to badblocks.

I don't have much regard for Seatools, HDSentinel, CrystalDiskInfo or any of the other utilities that simply trigger a drive's internal SMART extended test - because I've seen that type of test "pass", and then ran it through badblocks afterward and had it expose problematic blocks.
 
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I use badblocks. Note that you can change the blocksize so that the block count will still fit in the int32. If you use -b 4096 then you should be good.
 
HDSentinel has a separate surface scan feature, it's called "Surface Test", and it's unrelated to S.M.A.R.T.

It's in the "Disk" menu.
 
I use badblocks here for checking suspect drives that are already in production, and DBAN as part of the initial DVT.
 
JoeComp said:
I use badblocks. Note that you can change the blocksizeo that the block count will still fit in the int32. If you use -b 4096 then you should be good.
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This is great, thanks Joe.

Too bad theres no Windows version of badblocks but booting up PartedMagic in a VM isn't end of world.
 
+1 for bad blocks, I always burn in my new disks with it. Haven't had any issues running it on my latest batch of 3TB drives.
 
CamaroZ28 said:
+1 for bad blocks, I always burn in my new disks with it. Haven't had any issues running it on my latest batch of 3TB drives.
Click to expand...

The latest version of badblocks defaults to -b 1024 instead of the -b 512 that older versions default to (only good up to 2.19TB).

And -b 1024 should be okay for drives up to 4.39TB.

For 5TB and larger drives, you need to use something bigger than -b 1024.
 
JoeComp said:
The latest version of badblocks defaults to -b 1024 instead of the -b 512 that older versions default to (only good up to 2.19TB).

And -b 1024 should be okay for drives up to 4.39TB.

For 5TB and larger drives, you need to use something bigger than -b 1024.
Click to expand...

Very useful info here, will certainly take this advise when I eventually start buying those size hard drives! Thanks
 
UhClem said:
Run badblocks on Cygwin under Windows.
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Hmm, There is e2fsprogs in cygwin but installing it does not give me badblocks like it does on linux.

Edit:

I take that back. badblocks is in the /usr/sbin folder under cygwin.

Code: 
jdrescher@radimgws93 /usr/sbin
$ ls
accessdb.exe      e2undo.exe       mkfs.cramfs.exe   sftp-server.exe
agetty.exe        fdisk.exe        mkfs.exe          sshd.exe
alternatives.exe  filefrag.exe     mkfs.ext2         ssh-keysign.exe
backup            findfs.exe       mkfs.ext3         ssh-pkcs11-helper.exe
badblocks.exe     fsck.cramfs.exe  mkfs.ext4         swaplabel.exe
blkid.exe         fsck.exe         mkfs.ext4dev      tune2fs.exe
cfdisk.exe        fsck.ext2        mkfs.minix.exe    tzselect
cygserver.exe     fsck.ext3        mklost+found.exe  update-alternatives
debugfs.exe       fsck.ext4        mkswap.exe        uuidd.exe
dumpe2fs.exe      fsck.ext4dev     readprofile.exe   wipefs.exe
e2freefrag.exe    fsck.minix.exe   resize2fs.exe     zdump.exe
e2fsck.exe        logsave.exe      restore           zic.exe
e2image.exe       mke2fs.exe       saslauthd.exe
e2label           mkfs.bfs.exe     sfdisk.exe
 
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