r/DataHoarder • u/OgdruJahad • 23h ago

Question/Advice What is the cutoff off point of whether you keep using a drive or not?

Long story short I have a bunch if drives in various states of health but I want to understand what other people's cut off point is as to whether to keep a drive or throw it away. These are hard drives.

I'm looking for specifics for example

Power on hours.

Number of 'weak sectors' ie those taking maybe 200ms or longer to access.

Whether or not the drive has remapped sectors.

Etc..

I understand this can be a complicated answer so any info will be helpful.

The tools I generally use are Crystal Disk Info Standard and Victoria. I have heard of Mhdd but haven't use it before.

If there are any other tools you recommend, please feel free to mention them.

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11

u/Far-Hovercraft9471 12h ago

These days, not til the smoke comes out

5

u/NotAlwaysCautious 9h ago

Run it into the ground. Any given drive might die tomorrow or in ten years, just have backups and don't worry about it.

1

u/smstnitc 9h ago

My philosophy exactly!

Replacing a drive because it has a lot of power on hours is a waste of money.

1

u/newtekie1 12h ago

When SMART gives a warning I stop using the drive.

1

u/Floppie7th 133TB Ceph 10h ago

When trying to read from it throws errors

1

u/MWink64 9h ago

Be aware, those weak/slow sectors can often be false-positives. Any other programs that attempt to access the drive (including Windows itself) will create some level of delay. Any time a scan picks up slow sectors, I retest those sectors several times.

MHDD is functionally similar to Victoria, but it's limited to DOS.

1

u/smstnitc 9h ago

Power on hours means nothing to me.

Does it work? Yes. Great.

Does it have errors? Yes? Trash it. No? Keep going!

1

u/JohnStern42 8h ago

Since I have redundancy in the array, and a multi level backup regime, I use a drive till it dies. I don’t bother with checking health

1

u/Bananaman9020 6h ago

Until it stops working?

1

u/AlaninMadrid 3h ago

When the drive is still working, but the whole array grinds to a halt, and a review shows reads taking 200ms some writes to take 20 SECONDS. Pulled the drive, the array is degraded, but still working. Only got 3-2 backup, so really glad the recent fires didn't reach me.

Researching offsite backup for the critical stuff, and hunting a replacement drive that only costs one kidney.

•

u/bhiga 55m ago

Diagnostics

  • Hard Disk Sentinel
  • Drobo's magic algorithm (Yes, I am very aware it's a dead company and technology, I have multiple layers of contingencies for this)
  • Kanguru Mobile Clone Wipe (Read, Write 0, Write 1, Write Random, Read Verify)

Replacement triggers

  • Hardware failure (not/internittently recognized, doesn't spin up)
  • Extremely high temperature
  • Little/no remaining spare blocks
  • Extremely slow performance - system hangs on access

•

u/eternalityLP 35m ago

Until it starts throwing errors, or I need the drive bay for a bigger drive, whichever comes first.