HDD Docking Stations & Burning In New Disks

[eknee1417]

I've been in the process of burning in various 2TB WD Red drives the last month.  Its a long story but essentially I had a drive fail, rma'd it, and 3 rma's later here I am.  I keep having issues with every drive saying it has too many bad blocks but I'm starting to think something else is going on considering its my 3rd RMA.  I'm currently testing everything with WD LifeGuard Tools extended test.  So a couple of questions have cropped up now as I'm new to this burning in process.  Here we go...

 

[*]Why can't I read SMART data using a docking station?

[*]Is there another burn-in tool I should use?  I can only use my HDD dock so it has to work with that.

[*]Has anyone else had issues of multiple RMA's in row?

 

 

Really appreciate any feedback on this.

[cassiusdrow]

Are you talking about something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066

 

If so, I would not recommend using one of those to burn in a drive because there is no cooling.  Also, I don't think you can get SMART data over a USB connection.  You would need to use eSATA or SATA.

 

For burn in, I use Joe L.'s preclear script, available here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

It exercises the drive and clears it for quick adding to an unRAID array.

 

I've had RMA issues, but never on RMA replacements.  Once, I received four drives in one shipment and had two drives fail immediately - one DOA and another during the preclear burn in.

[eknee1417]

Thanks!  My only option currently is to use a docking station as I don't have any PCs that I can connect the new drive up to internally.  I would love to use pre_clear but I only have a windows machine.  I could VM something but I'm not sure how that would work a dock. 

 

Is there any HDD dock that would be recommended?  Anyone try using a VM of Linux on windows with a HDD dock?

[trurl]

Are you intending to use these disks is some system other than unRAID and are trying to test them? People normally run preclear on the unRAID system.

 

There are external docks with eSATA available, and you can convert a SATA port if you have one available into an eSATA port with an eSATA bracket.

[eknee1417]

Definitely intending to use these for unRAID. I'm just handicapped by the fact I don't have any good way to test them with the preclear script as my unRAID box has no extra sata ports at the moment.  I also don't have an option to add a controller card (it was a free mobo).  I just picked up a hdd dock with an esata connection which should be here on tuesday of next week (at least I can read SMART then).  Can the preclear script be run from ubuntu?  I'm a noob when it comes to linux so bear with me if some of these questions have obvious answers.