Dale wrote: > Howdy, > > I finally bought a 8TB drive. It is used but they claim only a short > duration. Still, I want to test it to be sure it is in grade A shape > before putting a lot of data on it and depending on it. I am familiar > with some tools already. I know about SMART but it is not always > 100%. It seems to catch most problems but not all. I'm familiar with > dd and writing all zeores or random to it to see if it can in fact > write to all the parts of the drive but it is slow. It can take a long > time to write and fill up a 8TB drive. Days maybe?? I googled and > found a new tool but not sure how accurate it is since I've never used > it before. The command is badblocks. It is installed on my system so > I'm just curious as to what it will catch that others won't. Is it > fast or slow like dd? > > I plan to run the SMART test anyway. It'll take several hours but I'd > like to run some other test to catch errors that SMART may miss. If > there is such a tool that does that. If you bought a used drive, what > would you run other than the long version of SMART and its test? > Would you spend the time to dd the whole drive? Would badblocks be a > better tool? Is there another better tool for this? > > While I'm at it, when running dd, I have zero and random in /dev. > Where does a person obtain a one? In other words, I can write all > zeros, I can write all random but I can't write all ones since it > isn't in /dev. Does that even exist? Can I create it myself > somehow? Can I download it or install it somehow? I been curious > about that for a good long while now. I just never remember to ask. > > When I add this 8TB drive to /home, I'll have 14TBs of space. If I > leave the 3TB drive in instead of swapping it out, I could have about > 17TBs of space. O_O > > Thanks to all. > > Dale > > :-) :-)
Update. I got a lot of info and suggestions from the replies. Thanks to all for those. The drive has passed all the test so far. I ran a short and long SMART selftest. Results: root@fireball / # smartctl -l selftest /dev/sde smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-linux-5.6.7-gentoo] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 24592 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 24592 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 24213 - # 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 23493 - # 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 22749 - # 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 22054 - # 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 21310 - # 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 20566 - # 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 19846 - #10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 19101 - #11 Short offline Completed without error 00% 18381 - #12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 17637 - #13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 16893 - #14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 16173 - #15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12108 - #16 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11940 - #17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11772 - #18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11604 - #19 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11436 - #20 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11268 - #21 Short offline Completed without error 00% 11100 - root@fireball / # I then ran badblocks to test it. This is the results of it. root@fireball / # badblocks -b 4096 -s -v /dev/sde Checking blocks 0 to 1953506645 Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done Pass completed, 0 bad blocks found. (0/0/0 errors) root@fireball / # It doesn't show it now but I had it show the progress including run time. It took about 15 hours to run on this 8TB drive. If anyone wants to test a drive in the future, that may help estimate the amount of time to run this test. I tried the conveyance test but this drive doesn't support it. Since it shows no errors and it passed the SMART tests as well, I'm thinking it is time to put data on the thing. Off to the LVM manual. Thanks to all for the tips, tricks and suggestions. Dale :-) :-)
