I got my 10x HDDs delivered from ServerPartDeals, they’re Dell branded Exos drives, Seller Refurbished

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I know one of the first things I’m supposed to do is make sure they’re configured to run at 4K, not 512, so I’ll be checking that.

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I’ll also plug them all into a HDD dock and read the SMART data off them.

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Afterwards, I remember reading a guide (here I believe) about how to test all the drives. There was a command line tool to check the drive for errors.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I remember I had to run a plugin on the computer to make sure I could run multiple instances of it.

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Alternately, I intend to spin up a TrueNAS instance for this, does TrueNAS have any built in tool to fully check the drives before I create any pools?

  • acdcfanbill@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    when I get new hdds, i open a tmux instance with one pane per hdd, then i do:

    • smartctl -t short /dev/sdX
    • smartctl -t conveyance /dev/sdX
    • badblocks -b 4096 -ws /dev/sdX
    • smartctl -t long /dev/sdX

    And if it passes all those, then I put them into a zpool.

    edit: for bigger drives, you might need to increase the block size for badblocks, 65535 for example.

    • johandepohan@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Can you tell me why you go for 2^12 but then choose (2^16)-1 as an alternative? Wouldn’t that create alignment issues?

  • msanangelo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I usually just yolo and throw them into the pool but my last drive I just did a long SMART test and it came up clean so into the pool it went.

    One can also do a badblocks run if you don’t mind waiting the extra time to do so and can understand the logs.

    • kick_me88@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Looks handy!

      Would that default 8096 block size be large enough for 18TB HDDs, or would I have to go higher?

          • FeelingPapaya47@alien.topBEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yes, but badblocks only supports 32 bit values. If you chose a small block size like 4096 the final block number will be too large to fit into 32 bit and it will choke. You can either use 8192 or do multiple runs of 4096 by specifying an end block smaller than 32 bit. More information

  • media_05@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    a) If you plan to encrypt the drive, VeraCrypt “full format” when encrypting will fill the whole HDD with random data. If there’s a bad sector or corruption, VeraCrypt will let you know or you can use CrystalClearlnfo application simultaneously.

    b) If you’re not planing to encrypt it, do the “complete format” option on Computer.

    c) Any application that overwrite with one and zero (just search for them) and then use CrystalClearlnfo.

    Each one of these options can take a long time to finish, a 5TB HDD can take 12 hour in each of these options.