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New hard drive - best break-in procedure?

L

legocitytruck

Senior member
When purchasing a new large capacity harddrive (1 TB or larger), what is the correct method for breaking it in to help achieve maximum longevity? I have read various suggestions such as utilites that will scan or write to every sector. Is this a good idea? Should something else be done?
 
Ya, the theory about breaking it in to make it last longer is incorrect in my opinion.

Most people would work the sucker hard right off the bat to kill the weak ones, and if it survives that, the odds of it breaking soon after are lower.
 
I usually just do a full format to make sure the drive can access all the sectors correctly. But I don't "burn them in".
 
Originally posted by: homercles337
Bad idea. "Burn-in" or "break-ins" are never a good idea. This stuff has been debunked for years, why does it persist?
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debunked? I saw the OPPOSITE.

You do NOT break it in to make it last longer, breaking it in stresses the drive and if anything reduces its lifespan... BUT... if the drive had a defect to begin with, it is highly likely to fail during breakin. Most drive failures I have seen occurred within the first week of operation.

You should ALWAYS break in your drives. if they survive, they will likely last a while. If they don't, you can return them for a replacement and you haven't lost any data.

I begin every new drive with a nice full format, then I fill it up with data and leave it spinning for at least 24 hours. I then run some checksumming programs like par2 to verify that the drive is still working AND that the data was written with no errors. If it all works well, I will either run some specialized burn-in tool, or just use them, depending on their intended purpose and how lazy I am feeling at the moment. (for example, a raid6 array drive will not need further burn in because two drives in the array can fail without dataloss...)
 
oh, i also have an alternative for a burn in... replace current drive... and keep old drive on a shelf for a few weeks before selling it. If the new drive turns out to be defective, you still have the old drive with all the data.
 
I apologize, I meant a program that checks the drive for any abnormalities after formatting. When you said you leave the disk spinning for 24 hours, do you do this just by leaving the computer running?
 
Originally posted by: legocitytruck
When purchasing a new large capacity harddrive (1 TB or larger), what is the correct method for breaking it in to help achieve maximum longevity?
Click to expand...
* Provide it with good "clean" power via a quality power supply and something like an APC LE1200 line conditioner.
* Keep the drive as cool as possible with good air flow over it.

 
Originally posted by: legocitytruck
When purchasing a new large capacity harddrive (1 TB or larger), what is the correct method for breaking it in to help achieve maximum longevity? I have read various suggestions such as utilites that will scan or write to every sector. Is this a good idea? Should something else be done?
Click to expand...

In windows explorer, right click the drive and select "properties".
Go to the "tools" tab
Under error-checking, click "check now"
Check all the boxes and hit start
Windows will probably tell you it can't be done because the drive is in use. Do it on next reboot? Click yes.


Assuming Windows has given the drive ok and it has no bad sectors, you can move on to the stress testing. Download a copy of Bart's Stuff Test. Set it to constantly read and write to the disk and leave that running for a few days. When that's done, repeat the Windows error checking process above. If it's still good and the drive isn't making that horrible Maxtor kachunk kachunk noise, the drive is probably good to use.
 
I usualy hit mine with a hammer while shooting it with a water gun while running zero fill, if it can take that its bound to last for years to come.
 
Originally posted by: legocitytruck
I apologize, I meant a program that checks the drive for any abnormalities after formatting. When you said you leave the disk spinning for 24 hours, do you do this just by leaving the computer running?
Click to expand...

checkdisk with windows can check the disk for abnormalities, but will not find data errors... I check FILES for data errors, using one of the above named programs. It means MAKING a par2 file before putting the data on the drive.

And by leaving it spinning i mean just that. leave the computer on (turn off the power saving feature to turn off harddrives after X minutes of idleness, it is an option in the power setting in windows)
 
Actually, a burn-in is really important for hard drives. They have a bathtub curve failure rate. I load mine for a week straight before they go into a raid 5 array to weed out infancy failures before they get placed in service. When I was on the 500GB generation of drives, I had a WD drive that died on day 4. The latest generation Seagate drives found a DOA (packaging during shipping) and a old 7200.11 firmware bug in those first 7 days.

Seven days doesn't get rid of all the infancy failure chance, but the start of the curve is very steep.
 
Bathtub curve, very simply, usually is bounded by a descending infancy death rate, a normal death rate that stays pretty constant, and then an ascending old age death curve. I'm sure you could Google/wikipedia it if you wanted. More or less it looks like (apologies as I'm bad at this): \__/ whereas a Bell curve is more of _/^\_

A Bell curve is somewhat of an inverse, but you wouldn't use it for most non-burned in mechanical devices because manufactured mechanical devices oftentimes fail early on due to a component/material failure that occurs once the device is put into operation (aka the infancy death curve). For the easy-to-understand example... look at how many people with <1 year old have DOA items versus ones that fail in month 11 on NewEgg. You see tons of DOA mentions, quite a bit of "failed after 1 week", but 6-12 month failures are not reported too often. I understand that there are reasons for this, but it is a good example of the infancy death curve. There are much better experts on this than I but that's the general concept.
 
Originally posted by: legocitytruck
Originally posted by: pjkenned
I load mine for a week straight
Click to expand...

How do you load it for a week straight? Also, what do you do about all the heat generated?
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i run it in the living room instead of my bedroom when doing the burn in to deal with the heat.
 
Originally posted by: pjkenned
For the easy-to-understand example... look at how many people with <1 year old have DOA items versus ones that fail in month 11 on NewEgg. You see tons of DOA mentions, quite a bit of "failed after 1 week", but 6-12 month failures are not reported too often. I understand that there are reasons for this, but it is a good example of the infancy death curve. There are much better experts on this than I but that's the general concept.
Click to expand...

Those people (at least most of them anyways) probably didn't load their drives for a week straight, so I wonder if perhaps simply running the drive for a week would be sufficient. While it doesn't test the seek needle mechanism as much, it does put the entire drive under a long-term running condition where the HDD has to deal with built-up heat and applied voltage without a shutdown period.

I think the best idea would be to use a drive as a backup of your backup, but only access data from that drive for the duration of the "break-in" instead of wherever it normally is stored so as to apply a semi-normal load with non-mission-critical data so that there is a very low risk of something being lost, damaged, etc.

Thoughts?
 
Originally posted by: Blain
Isn't a "burn-in" period used to uncover a defective drive, rather than help a drive last longer?
Click to expand...

you are correct. the only person to suggest it is meant to last longer is a DETRACTOR of burn in... everyone who said to burn in said its to make a defective drive fail earlier. (specifically, when its easy to replace)
 
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