Faster alternative to badblocks? (Large drives are impractical.)

[winnielinnie]

Is there any faster alternative to check newly purchased drives besides using the destructive badblocks pass?

When it comes to larger and larger drives, such as 8TB+, the duration of these tests can reach over a week.

Currently, the only feasible test for new drives seems to be the extended SMART self test, which can complete overnight. I understand this only checks if a sector can be read, as no write operations are performed.

What other tools are available that don't take nearly a week to perform on very large drives? Is there a method or script to do read, write, and verify tests on only a percentage of blocks? Perhaps something like "check from beginning to end, but only one out of every four blocks"?



Instead of checking these:
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Rather check only these:
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo



Wouldn't such a test complete in about a one-fourth the time? Instead of taking four days to complete, it would finish in one day? Would you trust such a test, even though it doesn't check every single sector?

It becomes rather impractical for upgrading and maintaining NAS storage devices to run a thorough check once you start reaching individual drives with a capacity of 8TB or more. Surely there exists shortcuts out there?

 

[Jatrabari]

As it has been said many times in this forum it comes to how much do you value your data.

Also if you have several drives to check you can check them in parallel to save time.

Would you trust such a test, even though it doesn't check every single sector?

I wouldn't.