[colug-432] Flawless Drive

[Rick Hornsby]

On September 20, 2016 at 11:17:07, tom (thomas.w.cranston at gmail.com) wrote:

How can I check a new HDD or SSD for errors. I could use the Disks gui, 
but I don't think it will detect bad areas on either type of drive. Is 
there a command line I could use? Could a Windows install disk be used 
to check a drive for bad areas. Is it reasonable to expect a HDD or SSD 
to be 100% flawless when brand new? 
It depends on what you mean by "100% flawless". Should a drive perform adequately and to specifications out of the box? Yes, absolutely. Should a drive have 0 bad blocks already remapped by the drive's firmware? Probably. Does a bad block or two that's been remapped and that the OS will never know about really matter? No.

If you can momentarily retreat from the idea where you seem to think your new drive has bad blocks, and explain the symptoms you're experiencing, we might be able to provide better insight to whatever problem you're having.

There are many many software products which will perform a surface scan of your disk, and will attempt to validate that there aren't any bad blocks the drive's firmware has yet to remap. Use a little bit of caution when running these tools against an SSD. SSDs are a completely different storage technology than traditional magnetic platters. They are not nearly as easily manipulated into checking a specific physical area of the disk's memory, but rather often provide a layer of abstraction from even the SATA controller - to the point where you pretty much can't actually know with any certainty what physical part of the drive's "memory" you're looking at.

I am leaning towards a SSD for my laptop as I think it will not be 
affected by movement of the laptop. 
Well, yes. It is true there are no moving parts in an SSD. Under normal conditions, a spinny drive is not necessarily a critical improvement over an SSD as far as movement of the laptop. Between the computers and the drives themselves, modern gear tends to be able to park (lock) the heads when they sense a sudden acceleration - like a fall. A laptop dropped the wrong way from enough of a height onto a hard surface can destroy either type of drive. If the laptop is going to experience a lot of vibration - ie it will be used in a moving truck, get an SSD. Spinny drives are pretty solid, but there's no reason to risk dropping a head into a platter.

Would probably go with HDD for my 
desktop computer as it just sits there for years on end. 
SSDs have a few more benefits - they're faster, have lower power requirements, and don't run as hot. However SSDs are still a little more expensive on a per GB cost for smaller drives, all the way to a lot more expensive for the larger capacities.
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