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PecanEater

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 11, 2007
283
0
If I'm buying a new hard drive, are there any tests/diagnostics I should run on the drive out the box?
 
With today's bigger hard drives, I usually do the following:
First run DBAN and 0 wipe the drive 1-2 times (twice if time allows).
Then run SpinRite at level 1 to verify all sectors are readable.

This makes sure every sector has been written to and read from (with validation of the read) at least once.

I've heard SpinRite at level 4 (read, write inverse, read, write back original, read) is a good way to verify a new drive but I find with the 1-2TB drives it takes way to long.
 
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