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How to test an external (USB) hard drive?

How to test an external (USB) hard drive?

I recently bought a new 1TB USB mounted external hard drive (a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 2.0, to be exact). Before putting it into use, I would like to perform some rudimentary testing on it. Is this possible? Can anyone suggest a free software to do this? (I can use either Windows or Linux software, but prefer the latter.)

Asked by: Guest | Views: 242
Total answers/comments: 1
Guest [Entry]

"It depends on the type of test you are interested on :)
Since what people usually assumes is a 'test' is just responsiveness to troubles and resilience to hard use, any test can be replicated by shell scripts and by simulating what you are interested in testing. For example,

speed? You can use hdparm for that
reliability? Usually forum posts and statistics help to determine such disk average lifespan
temperature? it depends on the disk but (on non-usb) it is usually monitored by acpi

Since you mentioned 'rudimentary' tests I would suggest to go with those. But again if you want something more you should be more specific on what you are afraid of."