I got my 10x HDDs delivered from ServerPartDeals, they’re Dell branded Exos drives, Seller Refurbished
I know one of the first things I’m supposed to do is make sure they’re configured to run at 4K, not 512, so I’ll be checking that.
I’ll also plug them all into a HDD dock and read the SMART data off them.
Afterwards, I remember reading a guide (here I believe) about how to test all the drives. There was a command line tool to check the drive for errors.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I remember I had to run a plugin on the computer to make sure I could run multiple instances of it.
Alternately, I intend to spin up a TrueNAS instance for this, does TrueNAS have any built in tool to fully check the drives before I create any pools?
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.