The meticulous way of stressing a HDD

[Franklin]

Please look at the following Wiki Article for a recommended procedure on preparing hard disks for use in the Synology product or regular computers.

How to prepare your hard disks

[mortician]

What other programs can you recommend for the stress testing other than Dericks Boot And Nuke? DBAN does not have good support for newer system with SATA drives...

[Franklin]

mortician

What do you mean? I am able to use DBAN on many computers/laptops that use the SATA interface, from new laptops bought just yesterday, and computers as old as 3~4 years old.

Please check the BIOS settings of the computer, to ensure that the SATA controller is set properly to allow boots from SATA devices.

With regards to using other programs, you can use the manufacture diagnostic tools if it supports wiping or zeroing out the drive.

Hope this helps.

[mortician]

From the DBAN FAQ:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/faq/index.html#hardware

"Q: Why is DBAN slow?

A: DBAN does not yet have a good driver for your motherboard chipset. Wait for the next release or provide a hardware sample.

Computers based on the Intel 945 chipset, like most Core 2 Duo laptops, are known to be slow."

DBAN does not seem to support my Intel DG33BU mATX board, nor the SIL3112a SATA card I have in another machine (it crashes in both scenarios). I can change the Intel board to support SATA as a legacy IDE device, and DBAN does not crash, but then performance goes down the tubes and takes 36 hours for each 500GB maxtor drive I want for my CS406e. The native DOS SEATOOLS for Seagate and Maxtor drive support also crashed with both of my SATA controllers.

Basically, this whole problem would go away if the CS hardware could properly stress test the drive in it's software. I have wiped all the drive using Roadkils drive wipe software, but I do not know if this detect and remaps bad sectors or not.

I don't expect you to support these 3rd party softwares, but I can't be the only customer with similar issues. I think the main problem is most customers are not aware of the faulty sectors until they lose data. I had one drive crash, and another fail to mount in a 3 drive array last week. I recovered the data, but now I need to make sure this does not happen again. What's the point in having Raid 5 if bad sectors still cause problems. I need a simple way to test the drive so it can map the bad sectors without dealing with 3rd party harware and software compatibility issues.

Is R&D at least contemplating putting this is a future update for my CS-406e?

Regards,
Brad

[Franklin]

The ability to support "wiping" within the CS unit itself is currently under discussion and may be supported in the future. However take note that one observation I've seen while using DBAN is that wiping "Maxtor" brand drives is pathetically slow, less than 5Mib/Sec. And I've used four different kinds of SATA controllers/chipsets, it's the drives itself in my opinion (various sizes).

I did experiment with using Bart Stuff Test to stress the Maxtor HDD, however it results in the poor speed of less than 5MiB/Sec.

To ensure that every sector is healthy, you just have to use software which specifically writes a 0 in every single sector. If it does this, then it should be good to go.

Another software to try is KillDisk Basic which does the same thing as DBAN. KillDisk Professional is the same as DBAN, where it has government levels of destroying data; but for our purposes, KillDisk may be an adequate alternative.

[kai]

Dear Franklin,

Since sanitizing is now recommended in the Synology wiki, I would like to look a little bit deeper into it.

Like probably many other users, I do not own a PC any more, but only notebooks which are perfectly supplemented by a Synology NAS.

Therefore I have an obvious question: Is there a way to sanitize a 3,5" SATA drive with a notebook, e.g. via USB or via cardbus to esata adapter?

Best regards,
Kai

[Franklin]

kai-

Using Roadkil's Diskwipe should achieve the same results in a Windows Environment, using an enclosure for the 3.5" HDD.

Alternatively, if your laptop supports booting up to external HDDs, you should be able to use DBAN to that HDD with no issue.

[kai]

Since either Roadkil's Diskwipe's website is down since some days or the Golden Shield prevents me from accessing it, I tried Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. This program can be downloaded from WD's website, works also with non-WD HDDs and pretends to write zeros in every part of even USB connected HDDs.

Nevertheless I am still not 100% sure that something like this can be done with a disc which is connected via USB.

[teo]

I can get the same results of DBAN with Disk Utility on Mac OS X, right?
It can writes 0s once, 7 or 35 times.

[Franklin]

teo-

Judging from the link, the information stated should meet the same objectives as DBAN, so it should work just fine. I'll add your link to the Wiki Article

[pyl]

Since either Roadkil's Diskwipe's website is down since some days or the Golden Shield prevents me from accessing it, I tried Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. This program can be downloaded from WD's website, works also with non-WD HDDs and pretends to write zeros in every part of even USB connected HDDs.

Nevertheless I am still not 100% sure that something like this can be done with a disc which is connected via USB.

Does anyone know whether this is possible via USB using Roadkil's Diskwipe?

[Franklin]

Greetings pyl

Yes, it is possible using Roadkil with a USB Drive, just be sure to select the correct disk before executing the wipe.
Hope this helps

[SHP-DS207+]

For those of you with Acronis True Image 11 Home: ATI 11 comes with a function called Acronis Drive Cleanser that will wipe a drive using any of a variety of pre-defined algorithms (from hard core DoD spec to simple ones). You can even custom define the algorithym.

I chose "Fast" which is a one-pass algorithm that writes "0"s over everything. I was able to wipe each of my 1TB Seagates in a little over 2 hours each. I used an extenal esata box and hooked it up to my PC.

[nyerinsd]

I'm a newbie to the NAS environment. My ds207+ should arrive tomorrow, and I purchased two Seagate 750GB hard drives with the intention of a RAID 1 setup. In browsing through the forum, I discovered I will need to prepare the drives. Both drives are SATA II. Given that I have a 5 year old desktop machine that does not support SATA, and I have a laptop, it appears my only solution is to purchase an external enclosure. Are there external enclosures that you put SATA drives into, but connect via USB or firewire? Any recommendations? I'm glad I came across this requirement, although I assume this is documented in the manual that comes with the ds207+.

[Franklin]

@nyerinsd

Yes, the enclosure that is needed has a SATA interface, and will connect to a computer using a USB/eSATA connection.

Hope this helps