About this tag
Smart testing on WindowsForum.com covers practical drive diagnostics, with a focus on SMART self-tests and burn-in procedures for new storage hardware. The tagged discussion walks through testing a new 16TB NAS drive before it enters service, combining a destructive badblocks pass with an extended SMART self-test run by the drive's own firmware. It explains what each stage does, the exact commands, and what a passing result looks like, plus a common mistake that makes large drives fail almost instantly. The emphasis is on catching defects while a drive is still empty rather than during an array rebuild.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    Burn-In Test a New 16TB NAS Drive: badblocks Block Size and SMART Long Test

    A new 16TB hard drive can go straight from the box into your NAS, and nothing will stop you. The case for waiting is simple: if the drive has a defect, you want to find it while it is empty, not halfway through the first array rebuild. That means a burn-in test, which here has two stages. First...