checking hard disk age and failure rate

[tiff2342]

whats the best way to check hard drives to see age and determain chance of failure rate?

 

[c627627]

Best way is to go to manufacturers web site and get their diagnostics an run an extended long diagnostic, which may take all night to finish.

For example if your drive is wd you do not want to see the screen shot below.


Warranty status on manufacturer web site is one indication of age, the other is deciphering the label which has a clear manufacturing date or a set of numbers which you need to look up to get the manufacturing date.

 

[c627627]

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=681331

Before saving any data on a 2TB drive, remember that *you* may be the first point of Quality Control. It is up to you to test the drive or risk losing 2TB of your data. Option 1: Quick Format - then find out the hard way if the drive is OK as it fills up with data. Option 2: UNCHECK: Perform a quick format and wait several hours for the Long Format to complete. Then start the computer using the manufacturer Diagnostic Utility and select to do the Extended (Advanced) error test.


When I hit a bad batch of Western Digital 2TB drives, some failed immediately upon being connected. Others failed only after a long format. Still others passed the long format and failed the Extended Test, as you can see below.

Spoiler

View attachment 97227

The point is: quick format will not detect potential problems. Long format may detect them but not always as the example above has shown.

Therefore: Several hours of Long Format - followed by an overnight Extended (Advanced) Test is what you can do to find out if you received a bad hard drive or not. If you buy only a few 2TB drives, this option should be strongly considered to save yourself a lot of potential grief.

(It may be a better idea to actually Perform a quick format first, just to quickly make sure the new drive is initially OK - and then UNCHECK: Perform a quick format and perform a Long Format lasting several hours.)

Unfortunately, some diagnostic software may be quirky: Hitachi hard drive diagnostics only worked if I switched from AHCI to IDE drive mode in BIOS. (Remember to change the setting back to AHCI when finished.) Diagnostic software for Samsung drives only worked if I booted from a PATA DVD drive and not from a SATA DVD drive.