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Old 17-07-2018, 12:16 PM
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sil (Steve)
Not even a speck of dust

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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canberra
Posts: 1,474
So you intend to still use it? Hook it up to a Windows machine and format the drive (UNTICK the Quick Format option, as that prevents an actual format of the drive). It'll probably take a day or two to format 3TB but a full windows format like this I've found is reliable to test if the drive is safe to use. If it fails for any reason, do not rely on it for anything, I just bin immediately but if it succeeds its a good sign it'll be stable as the process writes and verifies every single sector, its not a repair process but like I said often a "failed" drive is not realy a hardware fault. So a non-quick window format is a good confidence check, and something I do to every new drive I buy before using as its a finicky formatter so any hint of a problem with the drive will cause it to fail whereas drive formatting tools can persistently force dodgy sectors to take a format or just map them out which is a cop out in my mind. You dont need anything fancy. I havent tested DOS or Linux formatting but in recovering drives Ive ended up with tons of drives to test for reliability. This is the best and fastest way to get an accurate idea of current health of drive. SMART can be deceptive as brand new drives usually show some errors, its common that all drives show some errors (HDD, I havent had extensive SSD experience to say similar). I would use large drive with a failure history but format fine as say a page file/temp space drive where software can write temp files during processing and I could periodically format the drive without losing data and keep an eye on its stability.
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