Yes, i do agree at some level, but the major issue would be HOW TO BE SURE without opening the drive that the drive is still ok at all levels (heads, pre-amp, surface, pcb, etc) in a way that they could be later sold as used but in good working condition.

Of course that if heads are gone you can shut them down and self-scan on some models (example old seagates with ss code on them) but the point is not even that, we are talking about how to know that we can re-use a drive with confidence and that we are able to store data reliably on that same drive

Guess that no matter what it would be impossible to know, even for a brand new drive, and so the importance of backups. What we can do is to test and get some idea of the state of the drive, even if it looks just fine near perfect condition and ends up dying some hours later.

So would it metter to do a lot of extensive tests like having a drive under testing for hours ? Or would be enought some short tests ?

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As an example, on my known-good IBM AVV2 a simple "verify" with victoria will take more or less 20 min. (58644 MB drive) :



Change that to a write test in PIO using any free tool like Victoria or MHDD and we are looking for 6:30 just to do the writing test on the exact same drive. One pass, one test ....



The more you test the closer you are from a "conclusion" but if you assume that any drive can just "dye" from a moment to other (example toasted pre-amp or heads that just crash) the big question would be something like :

"If i have a pile of drives that i want to re-sell what tests should i use on them that :

1 - It will not take a huge amount of time.
2 - Will provide just enought confidence that the drive is still in a good shape to be re-used

And that is way more harder to answer then it looked like to start with

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Is UDMA has same disk testing options like HRT particularly defectscope etc.? Which is the Best disk testing tool among all , I want to certify that the disk is brand new /non refurbished & has no defects for various make of drives. Indivisual disk managers from vendors are mostly dos based with limited functions.

PC-3000 UDMA have the universal utility that can be used to test drives just like MHDD, Victoria, etc with the advantage that with a PC-3000 you can add defects to the P-List, move the G-List to the P-List and attempt to refurbish some drive by running for instance a self-scan (and that is vendor specific).
The best tool is always relative as you might like the way a tool works and I might like a little bit more the way other tool work instead.
I would say test the free ones and see for yourself !
To know if the drive is really new and was not refurbished might be difficult to do, in particular if no heads were depoped during the re-certification and it was done in a "decent" way like running a Self-Scan and clearing S.M.A.R.T..
When is poorly done a S.M.A.R.T. check and a surface scan like the physical aspect of the drive might reveal that the drive is not as new as one would think
At any rate it will depend of the way the drive was refurbished.

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Let's say that someone have a Seagate U6 for example and that someone do something like this :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=1246

Then unless the drive have an exterior physical apearance that looks like "old" or "used" and unless some head on the drive was disabled i don't know how you would be able to figure out if the drive was refurbished or not even if you have a powerfull PC-3000 ...

Of course this is a very old drive but even some modern drives like WD support some sort of Self-Scan and even on other brands someone could also move the G-list to P-List and clear S.M.A.R.T. ....

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Also i'm under the impression that you have MRT Pro.
If so MRT Pro universal utility is more or less the same as the PC3K UDMA one ....

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Oh .... and one of the most important things as well when testing the drives ...

As a first step, prior to even pugging the drive to power ...

Start by checking if your drive have signs that show that it might have been opened. Check the physical aspect of the drive and make sure it doesn't have marks of damage or that might indicate that the drive was not stored on the best of the conditions, and also check the seals and stickers and make sure that all the stickers that say that warranty is void if removed are still there and still intact.

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TESTING EXAMPLES :

I'm using as a "sample" for this testing a set of very old drives that I've just picked up from a friend.

Those are really very old drives so I'm expecting to find some defects on them, but because they have a very low capacity they are very fast to scan.

1 - FUJITSU MPG3102AT E :





The drive have some sectors on G-List and there are some more marked to be tested and possible added to G-List later. A scan of the surface reveals that there are a huge amount of bad sectors at the end of the drive. As this drive is one head and one platter it's very clear that the end of the drive (outer surface of the platter) have some damage. As the damage is big I wouldn't consider fixing this drive for re-sale.

2 - FUJITSU MPE3064AT :





Drive doesn't have relocated sectors and surface scan shows the drive is responding very fast and doesn't have slow sectors. I would do the other testing as explained at the start of the thread and if the drive would still show the same behavior when re-checking S.M.A.R.T. and scan I would consider it a candidate for re-sale.

3 - WDC WD200BB-75CLB0 :





Ultra DMA errors shown that most likely the drive was connected to a computer with IDE cable problems. The drive shows one sector pending relocation and zero relocated sectors. I would run the erase test to relocate the sector of fix it by writing data to it with correct ECC. Either way S.M.A.R.T. looks good even if one sector is relocated.
Surface scan shows some slow sectors but that is normal considering the age of the drive. On a modern drive I would say the drive was getting very used up and so I wouldn't re-sale with without doing a Self-Scan.
If I were to be very selective I would say that one relocated sector and slow sectors would be enough to require further actions on the drive prior to re-sale.

4 - ST320410A :



The drive have a considerable amount of relocated sectors. I didn't even bother to check the surface. This one needs a Self-Scan and even so I wouldn't re-sell it.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=1246

5 - ST310212A :





This one would require a Self-Scan as well, because it have a considerable amount of relocated sectors. Moving the G-List to P-List and erasing the drive could be an option as well, but not as "reliable" as a full Self-scan. Doing the full self-scan on this one could make the drive ready for re-sale.

6 - WDC AC28400R :





Well, this drive have just one relocated sector... Guess that it's still on a reasonable shape even more if we consider the drive age. A cosmetic fix (g-list to p-list) would do the trick and I would risk to re-sell the drive. As long as we keep in mind that it's a used drive and as long as we would replace it / refund if the drive were to stop working on the first weeks of use I think that it would be reasonable to risk to re-sell this drive.

7 - QUANTUM FIREBALL EX3.2A :





This drive have some relocated sectors and the surface looks fine. This would be a candidate for a cosmetic fix (moving g-list to p-list and reformat). I will do a guide on how to do so (with specialized firmware tools) one of those days. In any case as the G-List is not full a surface scan will not reveal "BAD BLOCKS" as the blocks that were considered bad were already swapped by spares.
When a sector that once was sequential and now is on a "spare" have to be accessed the drive will have to seek to that sector position at the end of the drive. By moving the G-List defects to the P-List and re-formatting the drive the defects will be sequential again and there will be no "jumps" or "seeks" to the end of the drive to find the "spares" when the drive is re-used.

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Hi HaQue, We offer a free hard drive erasing in Australia (including at our Adelaide office) - we test all hard drives using Atola Insight and/or PC-3000, all good drives are wiped using our own disk wiping software (US DoD 3 pass wipe) that also logs read errors/sectors not able to be wiped. This is offered free of charge. Why is it free? We keep the good drives to use the heads (for our clean room/head replacement work). All drives that are bad are degaussed and shredded free of charge at your own office.

This helps if you do NOT want the hard drives back, but if you would like to keep the hard drives - there are many tools to test hard drives (e.g HDD Scan) as well as programs like CrystalDiskInfo to check the SMART status.

Related Guide - Executing a "Cosmetic Fix" on drives with Bad Sectors :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=1397

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