Utility to burn in new hard drive?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jax wrote:
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.

Indeed. But the left side got pretty steep in the last decade
or so. Before it made sense to do some accelerated ageing
("burn in") to get to the level part. Today it does not
really for HDDs or semiconductors.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jaxx wrote:
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?

Where did you get that from? At least the drive manual and data-sheet
did not say so in any obvious places. or I overlooked that.

Arno

Mike Tomlinson wrote:
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.


That does sound like a fine test for a new drive, but it bears mention
that's a destructive test - it will erase the drives.

You can use -snv instead of -swv for a nondestructive test, though I
wonder if the nondestructive test is as thorough.

Joe S wrote:

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

If you mean 'test' it you can use the manufacturer's diagnostics.

But unless you're planning to pop it in an oven, or in some other way
elevate the temperature, you're not doing a "burn in."

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage timeOday wrote:
Mike Tomlinson wrote:
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.


That does sound like a fine test for a new drive, but it bears mention
that's a destructive test - it will erase the drives.

You can use -snv instead of -swv for a nondestructive test, though I
wonder if the nondestructive test is as thorough.

As far as I understand, non-destructive mode does exactly the
same as destructive mode, but afterwards reconstructs the original
sector. Don't let the power fail while you run it!

Arno

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:58:59 +0200, "Folkert Rienstra"
wrote:

"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.

Well don't hold back, give us some solid examples viable
today.



Infant mortality for HDDs is pretty low these days,

Just as low as it always was.

Even lower, manufacturing/QC is evolving over time like
everything else does.

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:02:11 +0200, "Folkert Rienstra"
wrote:

"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.



Is there a universal utility that can toggle this writecheck
on multiple drive brands? I know Maxtors did it too and had
a utility to toggle it back on, but I'd never tried it on
another brand of drive and don't even remember what it was
called.

hard drives are 'used up' by their 'use' - more use = less life. Burning in
a HD is much like using it up.



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

Jaxx wrote
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?

Nope, no one does that anymore.

In that case, testing a new drive might be worthwhile?

It makes more sense to increase the backup
frequency for the first couple of months or so.

Folkert Rienstra wrote
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.

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

That is Maxtor, not WD.

And that is for remapping of bads too, not for early drive death.

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.