Mark Knecht wrote:


On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:37 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> 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
>
> :-)  :-)

The SMART test, long version, will do a very reasonable job catching problems. Run it 2 or 3 times if it makes you feel better.

Chris's suggestion about Spinrite is another option but it is slow, slow, slow. Might take you weeks? On a drive that large if it worked at all.

As an aside, but important, I fear that you're possibly falling into the trap most of us do at home. Please don't. Once you have 17TB of space on your system how are you planning on doing your weekly backups? Do you have 17TB+ on an external drive or system? Will you back up to BlueRay discs or something like that?

Mark


Way back, we used Spinrite to test drives.  Think mid 90's.  Yea, it was slow then on what today is a tiny hard drive.  Can't imagine modern drive sizes.  It is good tho.  It reads/writes every single part of a drive.  It will generally find fault if there is one. 

Right now, I'm backing up to a 8TB external drive, sadly it is a SMR drive but it works.  As I go along, I'll be breaking down my backups.  Example.  I may have my Documents directory, which includes my camera pics, backed up to one drive.  I may have videos backed up to another drive.  Other directories may have to be on other drives.  The biggest things I don't want to lose:  Camera pics that could not be replaced except with a backup.  Videos, some of which are no longer available.  That requires a large drive.  It currently is approaching 6TBs and I have several videos in other locations that are not included in that.  Documents which would be hard to recreate.  Since I have all my emails locally, I don't want to lose those either.  Just a bit ago, I was searching for posts regarding smartctl.  I got quite a few hits.

Even if I build a NAS setup, I still need a backup arrangement.  Even if I have a RAID setup, still need backups.  It gets complicated for sure.  Sort of expensive too.  Just imagine if my DSL was 10 times faster.  O_O  I'd need to order drives by the case.

Dale

:-)  :-)