Hi, ive just recently received my new 7 hard drives which are these:
WD15EADS Caviar Green 1.5TB SATAII
I would like to be able to plug them into something separately, so that i can run a full checkdisk on them 1 by 1 to make sure they are ok, before starting to use them in the drobo.
(if any are bad, that way i can return them to the shop etc)
if anyone can recommend a particular model of a sata usb plug caddy etc that can work on XP that would be handy.
(i have a cable kit somewhere, it looked just to be a sata cable and a power splitter i’ll have to look more closely, but i think when some of the guys here, maybe docchris or others, mentioned them in the past, i did a websearch and they looked more bulky like paperweights where you put your bare drive in an upstanding position, so am not sure if the cable kit i have seems a bit “naked” or if it might do the trick
One is at my company server and used for backups. It is very easy and convenient to change drives. Unmount, Powerbutton, Change, Powerbutton - Done! Easier, faster and cheaper then tape backups.
I think the same product is marketed under different brands. You can also find it in different versions with different mixes of USB2, USB3, ESATA and FireWire.
I think Deltaco only sell to resellers in Sweden and maybe some Nordic countries, never to end customers. The product should be easy to find in most countries under other brands. Dustin is selling it here under the Deltaco brand. (Dustin is selling is as adapter. Almost as if they tried to make it difficult to find.)
i was just about to buy a dock station when soemone lend me a cable kit equivlent…
but… ive just run the WDC windlg tool on the 1st of my 7 new drives, and i got this result
no smart info:
first check passed,
second check failed on too many errors
have any of you seen this? (i sure hope the packaging box was not dropped
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD15 WD-WCAVY4655951
Unit Serial Number: N/A
Firmware Number: 0A01
Capacity: 1500.30 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 00:38:31, January 25, 2011
Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD15 WD-WCAVY4655951
Unit Serial Number: N/A
Firmware Number: 0A01
Capacity: 1500.30 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
Test Time: 00:48:08, January 25, 2011[hr]
just trying another drive now…[hr]
oh no, the 2nd drive i tried, comes up fine in terms of the windows usb auto detecting something
but nothing shows up in disk management, and WDCtool doesnt even find anything
am using the sata to usb connector kit
which is powered (by a dc plug that came with it)
and the usb plugs into my existing usb hub (since the cable it too short to plug straight to the (raised) pc and dangle, unless i rearrance the whole machine setup which cant do atm…
A suggestion on testing out the drives:
Use DBAN and zero fill the drive. Run this once or twice.
Use SpinRite at level 1 or 2, to test read the entire drive once.
This will fully exercise the drive, both writing to and reading (with a verified read) from each sector.
at the moment, i had some other usb issues so thought to try the Sata adaptor straight to the computers USB, and managed to like that connection
its been running that westerndigital drive utility (since its a WD15eads drive) for almost the past 23 hours… bit by bit, sector by sector - “as far as i know”, that WDDL tool tests each sector thouroughly and reads/writes/verifies etc
its taking a log time to check it out, and with 7 drives i need to test in this way (its almost 2 days per drive (with sleep overlaps and work overlaps etc) if im lucky, i’ll get through all 7 drives in around 17 days LOL - so i think im ok so far with this tool - but thank you for all suggestions they are always welcome :)[hr]
btw here is some of the information on the utility - it seems to have a ZERO writing feature too.
(i think i’ll get through all 7 drives first, and then might try that out with one of the drives as a test)[hr]
EXTENDED TEST:
For most computers, the WinDlg Extended Test takes anywhere from 30 minutes to many
hours to test one drive. Larger drives take longer to test. The performance of the
computer also affects the test time. If a bad sector is detected under Win9x/Me
environments, the test may stop responding for a few minutes and then continue. By
default, this is a non-destructive test. The test is destructive only when the user
selects the repair function and bad sectors are detected.
The EXTENDED Test scans the entire disk media from LBA #0 to the maximum LBA. When
a bad sector is detected, the user is prompted to repair it. If the user chooses to
repair, the program writes zeros to the bad sector which invokes the drive firmware
to relocate the bad sector and return the sector to a defect-free state.
WRITE ZEROS:
This option can be used to erase operating systems and file systems. QUICK ERASE
writes zeroes to the first and last million sectors. FULL ERASE writes zeroes to
the entire drive and may take hours to complete (depending on the drive size and
system performance).
If you forsee yourself doing this often, it may be worth getting a SATA or eSATA card so you can direct-connect the drive and bypass the USB-SATA layer, not to mention USB2’s lack of speed.
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD15 WD-WCAVY4655951
Unit Serial Number: N/A
Firmware Number: 0A01
Capacity: 1500.30 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 01:13:49, January 25, 2011
Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD15 WD-WCAVY4655951
Unit Serial Number: N/A
Firmware Number: 0A01
Capacity: 1500.30 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 00:48:18, January 26, 2011
cool - even though i couldnt get access to the smart data with the current connector, i can happily report all scans (on 2 drives so far) had a clean bill of sector health
I use a USB/eSata BlacX dock. Actually, I have 3 of them, 2 USB/eSata and 1 USB only. I use them for backing up the Drobo to bare drives and also for burn in testing before I use them in the Drobo or for backups. There are cheaper clones of the BlacX but I have not tried them. The BlacX docks have worked flawlessly.
I would hate to have to do what you are trying to do, X7, on a USB 2.0 port
hey thats interesting… does this mean that you could, power off the drobo, take out a disk pack, and clone a like for like drive from a drobo onto another one, x4 etc, and end up witha duplicate disk pack that you could put back into the drobo instead, power it back up and it would continue running?
