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Hard drive testing on WindowsForum.com centers on verifying new or suspect drives before trusting them with data. A recurring theme is NAS burn-in: recording SMART health data, running a destructive write-and-read pass over every sector with the Linux badblocks tool, then running an extended SMART self-test and comparing results. The method takes days and wipes the disk, but it can expose a defective drive while it holds no data and is still easy to return. Discussion also stresses limits, since burn-in filters out bad drives but cannot predict that a good one will last.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    NAS Hard Drive Burn-In: Destructive badblocks and SMART Checks

    You should test a new hard drive before you add it to a NAS. The usual method is called burn-in: you record the drive's SMART health data, run a destructive write-and-read pass over every sector with the Linux tool badblocks, then run an extended SMART self-test and compare the results. It takes...