I have a couple of old drives lying around from various computers. Also some have been removed from my Unraid server, because they had warning messages. However, due to my limited knowledge of SMART reports and the likes, some drives might have been removed without actually being bad. There is a high likelihood that some of the problems were due to bad cables and/or controller problems.

 

I also have enough hardware and cases to build a complete Unraid setup for the old drives. I am thinking of building a cold storage Unraid server, so that I can have a second copy/backup of important data. The second server will of course have a lot less capacity than my main server. It will mostly be used to copy data to it and most of the time it will be turned off.

So, the question is how to verify what drives are ok to use and what drives definitely are bad. I was thinking about the following:

 

1.       Checking drives with short and extended test with WD Data Lifeguard Tools. I have an external eSATA dock that I can run from another computer. The WD software also has the option to zero the drive. Should this also be performed?

 

2.       If the drive passes the WD short and extended test I can preclear the drive in my existing setup (I have spare SATA ports). I was thinking of doing preclear with one pass.

 

If the drive passes, it should be good to use, right?

Hi -

 

I'd just setup the cold server and run extended smart tests on all the drives there (before starting to use them for data).  If that works then run pre-clear cycle and good to go.

 

WD Data Lifeguard is also a good way to stress test drives.  I use CrystalDiskInfo afterwards to get the real SMART values, since all WD Data Lifeguard reports are the thresholds.  But if you have the ability to do the testing in unRAID, why not?