Harddisk testing

English Hardware
#1

Hello,

there are some older harddisks I would like to test before plugging them into my system. Are there any tools or specific methods to check a harddisk?
My current procedure is to copy stuff to the harddisk and to follow any i/o error. A SMART diagnostic could also be interesting, but does it really tell you more than statistics?
I’ve also read about bonnie: Bonnie , does it detect disk failures correctly?

Please recommend me some tools or procedures to check these harddisks before installing an unstable system on them.

regards,
Quentin

#2

queden wrote:
> Hello,
>
> there are some older harddisks I would like to test before plugging
> them into my system. Are there any tools or specific methods to check a
> harddisk?
> My current procedure is to copy stuff to the harddisk and to follow any
> i/o error. A SMART diagnostic could also be interesting, but does it
> really tell you more than statistics?
> I’ve also read about bonnie: ‘Bonnie’
> (http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/bonnie/) , does it detect disk
> failures correctly?
>
> Please recommend me some tools or procedures to check these harddisks
> before installing an unstable system on them.
>
> regards,
> Quentin
>
>
You could always go to the manufacturers website and see if they have
any diagnostic tools.

#3

Bonnie is a performance testing program. To check for blocks integrity, use as root badblocks

Example: badblocks -s -b 4096 /dev/sda