Hard Disk Drives HELP

[Frank07]

Good Day! Everyone.

I am planning on buying around 400x Sata 2.5 Hard Disk Drives as a bulk for a school which has more than 200 laptops and desktop running,. The seller says all drives are used but tested and are healthy. but i want to make sure i don't buy some defective hard drives so i want to check all of them by myself, and therefore i have few questions,

1, which software shall i use to test hard drives the best possible, All hard drives are from different manufacturers so something which can take care of all. should be a problem to use different software for different hdds,
2, which errors if comes up should i look for, so i can avoid those hard drives.
3, is there a way to check all these in a small amount of time.
4, The seller is in US (USD:9/500gb2.5sata) and next week i am going there to test and buy, but in the meantime if you can suggest some place where i can find hard drives but in quantity like more than 100,

I would really appreciate your help.

Best Regards

 

[tubagznyven]

free
1) Crystaldiskinfo - http/crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-...
2) HD Tune - http/www.hdtune.com/
the manufacturers own free diagnostic tools (available on their web sites) should suffice.

http/www.seagate.com/www/http/support.wdc.com/produ...

http/support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=6&la...

http/www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/

 

[Frank07]

free
1) Crystaldiskinfo - http/crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-...
2) HD Tune - http/www.hdtune.com/
the manufacturers own free diagnostic tools (available on their web sites) should suffice.

http/www.seagate.com/www/http/support.wdc.com/produ...

http/support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=6&la...

http/www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/

Thanks alot for your feedback, but it would be great if you also mention which errors should be considered fatal so i can avoid hard drives with those errors?

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

what is your position at the school?

Are you planning on buying larger drives for old equipment or replacing drives as they die?

Do the desktops already have mountings for 2.5" hard drives?

are 5400rpm 2.5" drives going to be slower than 7200rpm 3.5" drives in desktops?

If the drives were re certified & Warantied by WD or Seagate I might consider them.
But if pulled from old laptops being scrapped I would not recomnend using these second hand hard disks

Your data (and time fixing problems) is much more valuable than the cost of a brand new hard drive

On a practical point a quick test may take 5 minutes a hard disk but a full test may take upto a hour
That assumes using a desktop PC & powering down between tests.
You may be able to connect 2 or 3 drives at a time to a PC but only test one at a time

I would use Western Digital Data Lifeguard 4 Windows as it can test almost any brand of hard drive.

regards
Mike Barnes

 

[Frank07]

Hi

what is your position at the school?

Are you planning on buying larger drives for old equipment or replacing drives as they die?

Do the desktops already have mountings for 2.5" hard drives?

are 5400rpm 2.5" drives going to be slower than 7200rpm 3.5" drives in desktops?

If the drives were re certified & Warantied by WD or Seagate I might consider them.
But if pulled from old laptops being scrapped I would not recomnend using these second hand hard disks

Your data (and time fixing problems) is much more valuable than the cost of a brand new hard drive

On a practical point a quick test may take 5 minutes a hard disk but a full test may take upto a hour
That assumes using a desktop PC & powering down between tests.
You may be able to connect 2 or 3 drives at a time to a PC but only test one at a time

I would use Western Digital Data Lifeguard 4 Windows as it can test almost any brand of hard drive.

regards
Mike Barnes

Thanks for your feedback,
I am no one at the school, I am just offering help to friend as he is unable to travel to US,
Its just an upgrade for old equipment, and some of the them are about to die.
the stock we are buying is a mix of 500gb 750gb and 1tb, different makes and 5400 and 7200rpm mix, which is not a big deal, what matters is price which is seems to be too good, he plans on using them in laptops as wel as desktop,

Ok i will go with Western Digital Data Lifeguard 4, now the main concern is errors, will you please specify the worst error?

Thanks

 

[Lifeofgold]

Due to the number of drive, it will take a long time to "Test" each one. It would be best to first look at the S.M.A.R.T. info and see if there are any major problems. That still will take a few minutes per drive but faster if you can connect multiple drives to the testing platform at one time. Here is a link about S.M.A.R.T., there is a chart showing all of the parameters and which ones to which you should pay close attention: https/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

The reallocated sector count is one of the errors to examine. Drives with reallocated sectors are beginning to fail.

If you can connect 5 (or more) drives at once, you could test them all in a day or two rather than a week or two.

 

[Frank07]

Due to the number of drive, it will take a long time to "Test" each one. It would be best to first look at the S.M.A.R.T. info and see if there are any major problems. That still will take a few minutes per drive but faster if you can connect multiple drives to the testing platform at one time. Here is a link about S.M.A.R.T., there is a chart showing all of the parameters and which ones to which you should pay close attention: https/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

The reallocated sector count is one of the errors to examine. Drives with reallocated sectors are beginning to fail.

If you can connect 5 (or more) drives at once, you could test them all in a day or two rather than a week or two.

Thanks alot for your post and it is NOW clear. Really very sorry.. Mistyped not instead of now.. You were very much helpfull. Thanks

 

[Lifeofgold]

Thanks alot for your post and it is not clear. Thanks alot. [/quotemsg]

 

[Lifeofgold]

I'm sorry. Blame it on caffeine deficiency. At the bottom of the page is a chart showing known attributes of the self monitoring. There is a legend at the top of the chart denoting whether a higher or lower value is better and which attributes are critical. As to the connecting of the drives for testing, I was assuming that you would be testing the drives on one system before installation. If you were going to test the drives by connecting then one at a time, it will take a long time to test 400. I would suggest using a PC with a lot of SATA ports so that you can connect a lot of drives at once, then when you start the test program, it will read the S.M.A.R.T. info quickly and you can determine if a particular drive needs further testing. It is a way to get through the initial inspection of all of the drives in a timely manner.