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Utility to burn in new hard drive?



 
 
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  #21  
Old July 28th 06, 11:12 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Mike Tomlinson
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Posts: 9
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

In article , Joe S
writes

Are there any utilities which can burn-in a new hard drive before I
start to use it?


"badblocks -swv /dev/hdX" using any Linux distribution, where X = a for
prim master, b for prim slave, c for sec master, d for sec slave.

badblocks is on Tomsrtbt, a Linux distro on one floppy.
http://www.toms.net

This will give the disk a good workout - it writes 0xaa, 0x55, 0xff,
0x00 to the entire disk, twiddling each and every bit, and reports any
bad blocks found.

  #22  
Old July 28th 06, 11:13 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Mike Tomlinson
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Posts: 9
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

In article , Osiris ?@?.?
writes

Are there any drives that one could submit to diagnostics ALL the
time, that transmit "condition data" to the mobo/OS constantly ?


All of them. Google SMART.

  #23  
Old July 28th 06, 12:27 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
larry moe 'n curly
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Posts: 812
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?


Joe S wrote:
Are there any utilities which can burn-in a new hard drive before I
start to use it?


How about Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT), from www.hgst.com ? It
works with any brand of drive but will write only to Hitachi/IBM
drives.

Seagate's SeaTools will also run on any brand of drive but will do
SMART diagnostics only on Seagates.

  #24  
Old July 28th 06, 01:11 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
kony
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Posts: 7,416
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:07:55 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Osiris writes:

Is it "generally accepted", that a virgin HD will only decease within
1 hour or after 5 years of operation ?


With devices such as disk drives, if they don't fail within an hour or
two, they'll probably run for years. Vendors exercise drives to
reduce the incidence of the former. As a result, drives that survive
a very brief infancy will likely remain reliable for a very long time.



While that seems right initially, seldom do I hear of a
drive arriving DOA or dying immediately (within an hour),
usually it's within the first 9 months to a year if the
failure is premature.
  #25  
Old July 28th 06, 02:14 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Jaxx
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Posts: 3
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

On 28 Jul 2006, wrote:

Don Freeman writes:

The theory being that burning it in will reveal faults (that won't
show up until used a bit) in areas that can then be locked away
from use. Or, if a significant number, trigger the return of the
drive to the vendor.


Vendors have already done that. Prompt failures after their
testing are rare.


I thought one of the differences between a Maxtor DiamondMax and a
MaXLine was that the MaXLine had been soak tested for longer?

In that case, testing a new drive mightbe worthwhile?
  #26  
Old July 28th 06, 02:16 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Jax
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 8
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

On 28 Jul 2006, wrote:

Matt writes:

True if you don't care whether the drive works.


You know within seconds if the drive works. "Burning it in"
accomplishes nothing.


I think the information is not whether the drive works but if it will be
an early failure. The failure curve is a bathtub shape.
  #27  
Old July 28th 06, 03:57 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Folkert Rienstra
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Posts: 1,297
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

"Joe S" wrote in message
Are there any utilities which can burn-in a new hard drive before I
start to use it?


Bart's Disktool, www.nu2.nu/utils

Platform: Dos (and Windows9x)
This is a generic harddisk testing tool. It works on ALL disks that are controlled by the BIOS, ATAPI/SCSI/RAID. It accesses the
drive by INT13 and INT13 extensions. You can customize how the tests are run, in what order, how many loops...

You can also run it in "batch" mode, for burn-in testing.


  #28  
Old July 28th 06, 03:58 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Folkert Rienstra
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Posts: 1,297
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Joe S wrote:
Are there any utilities which can burn-in a new hard drive before I
start to use it?


Not really.


Clueless. They are just a bit harder to find.

Infant mortality for HDDs is pretty low these days,


Just as low as it always was.

so burn-in does not help much. Same is generally true for semiconductors.


It used to be different.


Like you are old enough to know.


Hiwever if you really want to burn in, then just put the drive
under higher load for some time. I used to do this by compiling
Linux kernels in a loop.

Arno

  #29  
Old July 28th 06, 04:02 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Folkert Rienstra
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Posts: 1,297
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
Osiris writes:

Is it "generally accepted", that a virgin HD will only decease within
1 hour or after 5 years of operation ?


With devices such as disk drives, if they don't fail within an hour or
two, they'll probably run for years.


Vendors exercise drives to reduce the incidence of the former.


If they did WD would not set Writecheck on for their drives early life
to catch bad sectors on writes.

As a result, drives that survive a very brief infancy


A timespan that you may want to speed up instead of waiting out.

will likely remain reliable for a very long time.


Hence the burn-in test.
  #30  
Old July 28th 06, 04:18 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.engineering.electrical
Arno Wagner
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Posts: 2,796
Default Utility to burn in new hard drive?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:07:55 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:


Osiris writes:

Is it "generally accepted", that a virgin HD will only decease within
1 hour or after 5 years of operation ?


With devices such as disk drives, if they don't fail within an hour or
two, they'll probably run for years. Vendors exercise drives to
reduce the incidence of the former. As a result, drives that survive
a very brief infancy will likely remain reliable for a very long time.



While that seems right initially, seldom do I hear of a
drive arriving DOA or dying immediately (within an hour),
usually it's within the first 9 months to a year if the
failure is premature.


And often its due to mistreatment, such as overheating, unclean power
or mechanical shock.

Arno
 




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