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    How to stress test hard drives?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Kyle, Jun 8, 2019.

  1. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    I have two new hard drives that I want to test.

    One is an external seagate 5tb drive. I downloaded the seagate tool and ran the short tests - now I'm running the long test which is just a read test I believe.

    The second one is an internal 1tb seagate firecuda drive. I'd like to test it now before I take it to to some relatives to replace their HDD.

    How do I stress test these drives?
     
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  2. Vasudev

    Vasudev Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Usually SMART Long Test will suffice because most stress test are synthetic. I've had 2 drives that passed all stress tests but failed afterwards during file copy. SMART still shows OK but they are pretty much dead.
     
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  3. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    Thanks.

    Is there any way to run basic tests on an internal drive without actually installing it inside a laptop?
     
  4. Vasudev

    Vasudev Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    You can use Ubuntu or any Linux distro LiveCD to do SMART Short/long test to verify disk health.
     
  5. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    I meant without having to put the HDD inside a laptop.
     
  6. senso

    senso Notebook Deity

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    SATA to USB adapter.
     
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  7. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    I tested a new 2.5 drive I got. using https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PTUQE4M

    I used the seagate tools program from Windows.
    SMART passed, but the long test was failing at 0% completed and the message seemed to indicate it was a bad sector error, and not much help beyond that.

    I then tried gsmartcontrol in linux.
    Did Short offline, Conveyance offline, and Extended offline and all passed.
    So is the drive ok, and something wrong with the seagate tools program?

    I have attached the results of the test in linux.
     

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  8. Vasudev

    Vasudev Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Booting into USB flash or portable OS will put any modern HDD into Frozen mode which can be Un-frozen by putting the pc to sleep and then resuming from sleep.
     
  9. Kyle

    Kyle JVC SZ2000 Dual-Driver Headphones

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    I did not boot into USB/portable OS...
     
  10. Vasudev

    Vasudev Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Maybe an issue with Seagate seatools. I use Linux GSMART Control to do SMART tests.
     
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