We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
when I get new hdds, i open a tmux instance with one pane per hdd, then i do:
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.
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?
I would use CrystalDiskInfo on them.
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.
Looks handy!
Would that default 8096 block size be large enough for 18TB HDDs, or would I have to go higher?
I think 8192 is high enough, since 4096 only breaks after something like 16TB.
Why would it “break”? Isn’t the 4096 the block size setting?
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
I was going to post this same thing.
Currently have it running on 2 - 20 TB Exos X20 with the defaults.
Crystaldiskinfo, disk drill, numerous other programs.
you're going to run truenas? so ZFS is gonna be your file system?
If so, here's what I do (I use ZFS)... plug 'em in, run a SMART check (just in case DOA), then BAM straight into production.
No bullshitting.
I have had HDDs pass badblocks, & still fail ZFS. Seeing as it doesn't get much more strenuous than badblocks, why tf should I bother if even bb isn't weeding out the weak drives? I have back-ups, so I have nothing to worry about. Just straight in, ZFS will sort 'em out.
If you're using ZFS, dont' bother with all the fluffing about of testing etc. ZFS *IS* the test.
i run a surface test with Hard Disk Sentinel. it takes a couple days but it's a good peace of mind assurance.
I just toss them in
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.