New NAS Zero Drives / basic maintenance

[iLikeProg.com]

First time NAS user here with a basic question. I have 4ea new 16TB WD Red Pro drives on a brand new system. Before I create my 1st pool, I want to ensure all the drives are in good condition as one of the four makes a loud chunk when starting up and shutting down the system (could be normal sound, not sure).

My normal computer routine with a fresh drive is to zero the entire disk before use. Is this necessary on TrueNAS Scale? I am currently running a manual long SMART test on all the drives as that seems a logical starting point to me. Any thoughts on best use on new NAS drives? Zero helpful or unnecessary?

Thanks!

 

[NugentS]

Personally I run badblocks for a complete cycle
Others use the solwise test that jgreco has produced.
Either takes a while as they stress the drives significantly

 

[joeschmuck]

I agree with @NugentS and I also test with badblocks, however solowise might be a better test for such large hard drives. As for time to run these tests, days! It's the size of your drives.

Since you purchased 7200 RPM drives, make sure there is air able to pass across them to keep them cool. Monitor the drive temperatures, you should be able to keep them below 45C (lower is better). 50C won't kill the drives technically but very few will run at those high temps.

And loud clicking noise is a red flag. New drives should be very quiet. Are these new drives or new-to-you drives? Unfortunately you can't RMA a drive because it's a little noisy, you need to wait until something fails. Run the burn-in test on your drives.

Also, if you haven't run burn-in tests on your RAM and CPU, do that as well.

Good luck and Welcome to the forums.

 

[iLikeProg.com]

Thank you both so much for the helpful replies! These are new drives: 2 from Newegg and 2 from amazon (not refurbished or 3rd party sale). So I will skip writing zeros. I did a search for solwise test jgreco and nothing came up. Also, if you would mind pointing me to the RAM and CPU burn in tests.

As for the stress tests, should I run the drive tests all at once to simulate a heavy workload or one/ two at a time?

Thanks again, much appreciated!

 

[Etorix]

That's: Solnet.

 

[NugentS]

Run the drive tests all at the same time using screen or tmux
RAM and CPU tests: Ram is memtest. CPU is whatever you can find, just boot what you need

 

[NugentS]

That's: Solnet.

Oops