Checking Integrity of Seagate 8TB Drive? Best Ways advice

[bikeman25]

Hello

Have a External backup drive, Seagate 8TB drive, wondering since i was wondering how would i go about checking the intergrity of this drive?   mind you i know its probably gonna take a long while,  i got no room internally to put it inside the PC, and running the check that way,  i suspect on USB 3.0 enclosure or hard drive dock would take ages and ages.      Christmas plan on getting hopefully a second 8TB drive to have as a mirror/backup drive for the household systems (can't afford a NAS as yet, plus no idea where i'd even put the Nas at lol)     

 

any advice is Welcome

 

[i_was_here]

If its an external backup drive then how do you have it hooked up currently? Does it not have an enclosure?

Assuming it is a bare internal drive and you don't have space in the PC then you will likely have to use some USB enclosure or dock. For speed I think the hard drive itself will be the limiting factor and not necessarily USB 3.0.

For non-destructive testing, you could just use chkdsk for bad sectors or use a utility like HDDScan to run a SMART test. Seagate also has their own specific tool Seatools.

[Sikh]

HD Tune and CrsytalDiskInfo are the two I use. Windows has built in SMART status check but SMART status isn't always able to catch issues with the drive. Both of these apps can tell you SMART STATUS, drive stats (temp, error count, etc) AND do a full integrity test if you want to go super detailed.

You will need a USB 3 enclosure / dock. I couldnt find my old dock and it was USB 2.0 so I ended up ordering this recently and really like it. Its as easy as a dock but also is an enclosure AND its powered. I had to recover a 2.5" drive for someone but wanted a powered dock and found something thats the best of both worlds, highly recommend it for the ~6 hours I put it through.

 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Sikh

[bikeman25]

Yeah it's in Enclosure right now,   Will setup Seagate tools and run a check on it then later tonight,  and then might buy  the linked enclosure later on, as mine is a kinda cheap one, but it works it seems for the drive just fine thus far.

 

Drive was obtained via a Twitter CES Contest in 2019, originally had it in even cheaper enclosure til that enclosure died on me, swapped to another one, so far working good 

  

 

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Can't you just look at the SMART data? That will show you everything about the drive.

[bikeman25]

Well with it in the Enclosure, it doesn't show any Smart Data,  i tried looking in details in Seagate tools Software prior to posting this.    I could try it in my Hard drive dock if i have to, but so far it seems to be working fine,  but since its my only backup drive right now, besides Onedrive,  i was thinking of just checking it maybe with Seagate tools later

 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I use CrystalDiskInfo. It gives me all the information I need on my internal and external drives.

[ThaCrip]

Assuming you can connect it directly to your motherboards SATA ports (since I don't think the following will work if it's enclosed in external case with USB connection) you could probably just boot up Linux (say Mint)  from a USB stick and run the 'Disks'.

like for example, Mint comes with 'Disks'. load that up, select the hard drive you want to check on the left hand side of screen then click the 'three dots' (just to the left of the 'minimize') and you will see "SMART Data & Self-Tests..." (if this is greyed out it's likely because you are using the USB connection and not a direct connection to your motherboards SATA port), click this, then on the lower left area of that window you will see "Start Self-Test", click this, and then you will see three choices, Short/Extended/Conveyance. a 'short' test will probably generally be good enough and only takes about 3-5 minutes to finish.

but in that "SMART Data & Self-Tests" window you can see more info on the general hard drive like Start/Stop Count, Reallocated Sector Count, Power-On Hours etc.

bottom line... if it says "Overall Assessment: Disk Is Okay" chances are the hard drive is good.

[bikeman25]

Yeah Crystal Disk info shows Blue/Good status for the drive,  No Smart warnings at all,   Checks with Seagate tools over night passed with flying colors,  so think all is good, and i can relax now lol i think

 

 

[+Warwagon MVC]

You might want to look into Hard Disk sentinel.
Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring (hdsentinel.com)

I run it on my file server, and it monitors the smart data of all my drives and is setup to 

A) Send me a text and email if one of the smart parameters are tripped
B) For my most important files there is an option to have a panic backup run in the event the heath of the drive goes south. 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Seagate has their SeaTools diagnostics.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[bikeman25]

Tested Fine with Seagate tools with Short diagnostic test, so relaxes now think drive perfectly fine and in proper working order.    And if at Christmas i do get my 2nd 8TB drive, at least won't just have one to store the data on,  gonna then store 2nd one off site at times at relatives place not far away,  and i should be good i think