External 2.5" HDD Testing?

[T_Minus]

Does anyone have a procedure they're happy with for testing and validating external spinning HDD before putting them into 'backup' duty?

Specifically talking about 2.5" WD ELEMENTS drives.

I'd like to validate them as perfect before putting data on them and dropping them in safety deposit box.

Thank you

 

[nabsltd]

Any external USB drive (or even an external enclosure) is essentially a black box with no way to guarantee that it properly reports back errors.

I back up to an trayless hot-swap SAS enclosure. I have opened it up, and see that it is nothing but a power supply (with power cables) and a standard mini-SAS HD to 4x SATA breakout cable. When connected to something like an LSI 9300-8i, it's really just a long cable from the HBA to the drive. This allows me to run whatever tests I want, and all errors/info can be seen (SMART data, etc.).

After backup, I pull the drive and put it wherever it needs to be for the required data value (on the shelf, in the fire safe, offsite, etc.). The advantage to this is that if you use SATA drives, you can plug them in pretty much anywhere to do the recovery. Even if your entire house is destroyed, you can recover your offsite backup drive for around $10.

 

[T_Minus]

Any external USB drive (or even an external enclosure) is essentially a black box with no way to guarantee that it properly reports back errors.

I back up to an trayless hot-swap SAS enclosure. I have opened it up, and see that it is nothing but a power supply (with power cables) and a standard mini-SAS HD to 4x SATA breakout cable. When connected to something like an LSI 9300-8i, it's really just a long cable from the HBA to the drive. This allows me to run whatever tests I want, and all errors/info can be seen (SMART data, etc.).

After backup, I pull the drive and put it wherever it needs to be for the required data value (on the shelf, in the fire safe, offsite, etc.). The advantage to this is that if you use SATA drives, you can plug them in pretty much anywhere to do the recovery. Even if your entire house is destroyed, you can recover your offsite backup drive for around $10.

Thanks that's what I was afraid of.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Surely the only real test it to keep the drives near a 29" CRT...?

More seriously, to echo nabsltd's point, I used to use a bunch of seagate 2.5" HDD - I don't think any of them lasted more than a year before carking it. Its USB->SATA bridge chip didn't support SMART passthrough, so it was impossible to do surface scans that way. The controller also liked to lock up under heavy IOPS. Even un-shucked, the drives were still trash.

It's appallingly old-school and un-trendy, but I'm now using a bunch of DeLock 2.5" caddies that support USB and eSATA (remember that?) and also crucially whose bridge chip supports SMART and I've had zero problems with those, touch wood.

As far as drive testing goes, just the usual runs of things like a SMART surface pass and badblocks.

 

[i386]

Surely the only real test it to keep the drives near a 29" CRT...?

 

[nabsltd]

Surely the only real test it to keep the drives near a 29" CRT...?

I used to have a 38" CRT. Wouldn't that be a better test?