testing hard disks with some confidence.

[HaQue]

Hi, I already feel I am going to regret getting involved in this.

I really don't want to do conventional drives.

A store I do flash for has somewhere between 100-200 HDD's that have been building up. Owner says they are mostly from upgrades, some could be new if a customer wanted a TB and the system originally had a 500GB for example. He has asked me what he can do with them. Obviously neither one of us want to sell anyone a bad drive, but I also don't know what I should be using to test them. Is MHDD good enough? should I test the twice? The plan is to go through the drives, and see what are sellable.

Anyone have any suggestions for testing these that isn't going to make me batty for the next two years? Is there maybe a hardware device not too expensive that is suited for this stuff? Should I not touch this request with a bargepole?

Thanks alot

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Hi, I already feel I am going to regret getting involved in this.

I really don't want to do conventional drives.

A store I do flash for has somewhere between 100-200 HDD's that have been building up. Owner says they are mostly from upgrades, some could be new if a customer wanted a TB and the system originally had a 500GB for example. He has asked me what he can do with them. Obviously neither one of us want to sell anyone a bad drive, but I also don't know what I should be using to test them. Is MHDD good enough? should I test the twice? The plan is to go through the drives, and see what are sellable.

Anyone have any suggestions for testing these that isn't going to make me batty for the next two years? Is there maybe a hardware device not too expensive that is suited for this stuff? Should I not touch this request with a bargepole?

Thanks alot

Haque ,
Spildit Has Nailed It Nice And Good ,Please Add The Following

1 : Open Each Drive PCB First
2 : Check + And - For a Short And Also TVS Diodes
3 : Run PCB Bare Without HSA With a Standalone Powersupply [ IC's Should Not Blow/Heat ]
4 : Clean Contacts Of Preamp/Preamp Pins Of HSA And Motor
5 : Connect Tested PCB To HSA

Follow What Spildit Said ....

[HaQue]

Thanks a lot guys, very logical. I appreciate the detail as well Spildit. No I do not have any pirated, or real PC3K or any other hardware. I do have plenty of PCs though, so can setup any suitable environment.

I really don't want to get into Hard Disks, but this seems do-able, and a shame to waste so many disks. I didn't want to buy any hard disk tools, because you know what happens.. once you start, you just keep on... and I don't want to take away from my Flash! But if one was necessary I would consider it.

I am guessing even though DR Pros just want to get a drive to work to recover data, they would have a way to confidently asses a drive for sale?

Thanks again

[LarrySabo]

Unless you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, I'd suggest zeroing the drives with Active@ KillDisk (free) and then selling them for parts/recycling to any data recovery business that's interested. Those that won't zero, just destroy the platters to protect the user data by punching a screwdriver through the inspection port on the bottom/side of the drive. KillDisk runs under Windows and will simultaneously zero as many drives as it can see, e.g., hanging off multiple SATA controllers. It still takes forever with larger drives. Selfscan also takes forever and is non-trivial to configure and run, from what little I know about it. You could buy all new drives for the value of time you will end up putting into the drives, even if you value your time at minimum wage. My advice assumes you don't really want to start doing data recovery from hard drives, otherwise you can keep them for parts and learning exercises yourself.

[HaQue]

Thanks Spildit for the extra info. looks like software will be enough. larry, you are right I don't want to get into HDD Recovery and I have more than enough learning planned already

cheers

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Unless you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, I'd suggest zeroing the drives with Active@ KillDisk (free) and then selling them for parts/recycling to any data recovery business that's interested. Those that won't zero, just destroy the platters to protect the user data by punching a screwdriver through the inspection port on the bottom/side of the drive. KillDisk runs under Windows and will simultaneously zero as many drives as it can see, e.g., hanging off multiple SATA controllers. It still takes forever with larger drives. Selfscan also takes forever and is non-trivial to configure and run, from what little I know about it. You could buy all new drives for the value of time you will end up putting into the drives, even if you value your time at minimum wage. My advice assumes you don't really want to start doing data recovery from hard drives, otherwise you can keep them for parts and learning exercises yourself.

Larry Sir ,
Nice To Catch You Away From DFL Forums Also .Spildit Already Told Zero Filling But Your Post Added a Few More Options in That .BTW Haque There Are Many Tools In The World That Can Zero Fill Many Drives At The Same Time On a Board .Assuming You Have 7 SATA Ports And 1 Is Used For Internal HDD And 1 For DVD-Writer .Then You Could Use Pending 5 For Zero filling 5 HDD's At Same Time .I Do This in Linux With Max 2 Drives

PS : I Am a Poor Man

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Spildit Wowwwwwww ,
You Got a Cool Deal When Your Purchased And i Recon You Do Not Regret It a Bit ,Keep It Up

[HaQue]

Very interesting, thanks alot. If I start getting sucked into the HDD vortex I will blame you guys!

I do actually find HDD recovery very interesting, but I know I don't have the time or money to do it properly, so I am going to leave it to the Pro's.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Spildit ,
Leave Haque Alone Now Lol Otherwise His Heads Gonna Blast .Haque Frank Is Still Missing

[HaQue]

missing? I know AU is a small Island, but I haven't seen him...

[Moltke]

drive it is better to check long smart tests (02h or 82h). (so WinDFT works)

[HaQue]

Thanks everyone, to use a phrase I know you guys love.. I will have a play and see how it all comes together!

[jono-ats]

Some very good and interesting info.

I've never used Self Scan on a questionable drive with success, because I don't really know how to best configure and use it.

But having opened thousands of drives and inspected heads under a microscope, there is nothing you can really do for drives with contaminated heads, and there are a LOT of drives with minor contamination spinning -- or not.

[athena]

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.

[payamdatarecovery]

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.