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Best way to scan the health of new HDDs?

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7
0
NAS
DS920+
Operating system
  1. Windows
  2. other
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
Hello I am a complete beginner when it comes to NAS and storage and network related things in general.

I purchased my very first NAS a ds920+ to get away from my reliance on cloud storage. SO FAR I FEEL OVERWHELMED and maybe this was too much for a beginner like me. But I will learn as I go and make many mistakes I’m sure. And to go with my 920 I purchased four 6 TB WD RED PLUS drives.

Now before I setup the NAS I want to make sure that the drives are healthy and I want to scan them to check for bad sectors and or other errors.

I read that DSM doesn’t allow to scan for bad sectors?

How would I go about scanning these NAS drives for bad sectors in windows 10 from my laptop? Would I need to buy one of those HDD adapters or can I run something like HD TUNE from the disks inside the NAS?

I Also need to scan my WD passport external Hdds that I will be offloading all files onto the NAS, but I think they may have some bad sectors and or bitrot? Any software suggestions to use to check hard drive health?

Thanks any comments and suggestions appreciated.
 
DSM scans all drives before they are incorporated into a pool. Afterwards, you can schedule regular SMART scans of all drives.
 
DSM scans all drives before they are incorporated into a pool. Afterwards, you can schedule regular SMART scans of all drives.
Hi Telos, Does DSM scan for bad sectors before making the storage pool?
 
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No, a full-diags NOT done by default. I always perform a S.M.A.R.T short and LONG ("Extended") test to fully diag every drive, before trusting and adding it to a Storage Pool. This is because the SMART Extended test checks every sector and does a stress-test that depending on drive size can take a day or longer.
 
When you create your storage pool(s) that process will take about a day (depending the size of your drives) to complete, and DSM thoroughly checks your drives in the background during that process, there is even a setting that allocates more cpu cycles to the process to complete faster in storage manager if I remember right. I believe you can still start using the pool immediately however, I did not, I let the process finish before actually copying data to my nas since it was only a day anyway....ymmv.

I am no expert, but I will interject my 2 cents here because I just went through this, and you mentioned bit rot. I am sure the gurus here will correct me if I am wrong. When you create your shared folders, enable the integrity check (it says something about data scrubbing) and I initially didn't do that because I didn't know what that was, its a feature that helps protect against bit rot, you can setup a schedule to run once a month or whenever and afaik it corrects problems when it can....so good stuff. I had to re-create my folders to enable it if its not selected on the initial process which literally checking a box during the creation of said folder.

Then after you get all set up, you get to think about backups. Another thing I didn't do. So when you start, read up on snapshots (which require BTRFS so use that, not EXT4) and Hyperbackup. I am just learning all this now, thats the only reason I am bring it to your attention....I wish I would have known a little more earlier on myself. You may be better prepared than I was?

BUT: In the end, its all pretty amazing and cool! And on another personal note, I would like to know your intended use case for your nas. :) Have fun!
 
Then after you get all set up, you get to think about backups. Another thing I didn't do. So when you start, read up on snapshots (which require BTRFS so use that, not EXT4) and Hyperbackup. I am just learning all this now, thats the only reason I am bring it to your attention....I wish I would have known a little more earlier on myself. You may be better prepared than I was?
Bit rot protection requires btrfs formatted drives... just FYI.
;) yep I mention that above too.
 
It is very important how you perceive the term NEW drive HEALTH. Because Synoloy's view can be quite different from yours.

My best practice for Win users and New drives:
- I test every new disk via Hard Disk Sentinel (I have been using it for every PC for years) ... use Search within this forum for more info
- I perform an Extended SMART check first
- then Extended Surface test which is based on Destructive Write + Read (Destructive because each sector on the drive is rewritten). You will not receive this type of test from Synology.
Then I'm sure the drive is OK and I can start to drive initializing via NAS.
My view on Synology SMART integration is not optimistic.

You can only take advantage of CoW FS such as BTRFS after initialization. However, it will no longer be able to deeply check the New Disk.
 
Last edited:
When you create your storage pool(s) that process will take about a day (depending the size of your drives) to complete, and DSM thoroughly checks your drives in the background during that process, there is even a setting that allocates more cpu cycles to the process to complete faster in storage manager if I remember right. I believe you can still start using the pool immediately however, I did not, I let the process finish before actually copying data to my nas since it was only a day anyway....ymmv.

I am no expert, but I will interject my 2 cents here because I just went through this, and you mentioned bit rot. I am sure the gurus here will correct me if I am wrong. When you create your shared folders, enable the integrity check (it says something about data scrubbing) and I initially didn't do that because I didn't know what that was, its a feature that helps protect against bit rot, you can setup a schedule to run once a month or whenever and afaik it corrects problems when it can....so good stuff. I had to re-create my folders to enable it if its not selected on the initial process which literally checking a box during the creation of said folder.

Then after you get all set up, you get to think about backups. Another thing I didn't do. So when you start, read up on snapshots (which require BTRFS so use that, not EXT4) and Hyperbackup. I am just learning all this now, thats the only reason I am bring it to your attention....I wish I would have known a little more earlier on myself. You may be better prepared than I was?

BUT: In the end, its all pretty amazing and cool! And on another personal note, I would like to know your intended use case for your nas. :) Have fun!
RE: "DSM thoroughly checks your drives in the background during that process"
Ah, now I see the confusion. No this is not a per-sector drive diags as was asked in this thread. What DSM is doing is known as a RAID parity check. By default, DSM uses the "Quick" recalc method to only do parity checks on the storage pool of space that it thinks is currently used and allocated to volumes, so that means you're not even doing a full parity check of the entire disk by default - You can change this setting from default to do a full parity check but it still is NOT checking every sector of the drive as was asked in the forum; just a parity check to bring the drive into the storage pool's RAID configuration (e.g. RAID5, SHR, etc). The Quick SMART test only checks the first 1GB or so. The only method DSM has to address this thread, is the Full SMART test which is doing the full sector scan diags and depending on drive size takes at least about a day to complete.
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It is very important how you perceive the term NEW drive HEALTH. Because Synoloy's view can be quite different from yours.

My best practice for Win users and New drives:
- I test every new disk via Hard Disk Sentinel (I have been using it for every PC for years) ... use Search within this forum for more info
- I perform an Extended SMART check first
- then Extended Surface test which is based on Destructive Write + Read (Destructive because each sector on the drive is rewritten). You will not receive this type of test from Synology.
Then I'm sure the drive is OK and I can start to drive initializing via NAS.
My view on Synology SMART integration is not optimistic.

You can only take advantage of CoW FS such as BTRFS after initialization. However, it will no longer be able to deeply check the New Disk.
RE: "You can only take advantage of CoW FS such as BTRFS after initialization. However, it will no longer be able to deeply check the New Disk."
No. This is incorrect starting with DSM 6.2.4, and further enhanced in DSM 7.. You can now schedule a Data Scrub, which includes (1) RAID parity re-checks, and (2) full BTRFS bit rot (more commonly called Silent Data Corruption in the industry), and (3) SMART extended which scan every sector, and remap/fixes anything wrong in the background. Also, it's recommended to do at least a Quick SMART test once a month or so to read the latest SMART info from the drives own internal info so you know if its starting to have sector errors and time to replace. NOTE that you do not want these routine diags happening all at the same time, because it boggs down the NAS so badly you can barely use it; I set work for 3am weekends and space them a weekend apart because each takes a day or two for completion, so they're ready again by Monday morning. For personal use, I do the opposite and usually start around Wednesday staggered again weekly or at least a few days apart in the scheduler so I can play on weekends.
However - I reiterate doing the SMART extended/long test as I mentioned earlier before trusting any new drive, because it scans every sector and really stress-tests the drive, before adding to any storage pool (which then only does parity checks by default of used portions).
 
@blogthis

the topic is about:

Best way to scan the health of new HDDs?​


The NEW disk means:
the disk that has not yet been used in the NAS - has not been initialized.
What you are describing (Data Scrubbing) is running the additional scheduled health check (CoW based)after initialization. And the initialized disk has defined FS already.
The essence of health check of the NEW disk before initialization is to detect disk failures even before any first write to such disk = before the initialization.
So, we can discuss this topic really deeply here.
 
In DSM 7, the BTRFS metadata for detection of Silent Data Corruption is repaired, at the same time as the Parity Check for RAID redundancy. Those two features are now merged and happen simultaneously during any scheduled scrub operation. This is done automatically when you insert a new drive into the storage pool, but as I described these features do not checking every sector.
The point of this thread, was how to check every sector of a new drive before trusting it.
Synology DSM 6/7 does not do this with your proposed simple Parity Check (Scrub) strategy.
Synology 6/7 only has a single feature to scan every sector, and this done by doing a SMART Extended test to check every sector which can take a day or more to complete depending on size.
THEN, after that SMART Extended passes, is when I trust the drive to put it into the storage pool, which THEN DSM will run the Parity and Data Scrub.
Personally, I have the DSM default setting of "quick parity" disabled so it scrubs more of the drive but still that is NOT scanning every sector; the point of this post.
Summary.
You should do all of the above IN the order I described matters a lot.
Just space the operations out by a month or so once you trust the drive.
You can reduce the life of the drive running this many deep diags all the time.
 
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I didn’t expect to get so many replies, What a great forum. This is turning out to be an interesting discussion. 🌻

To clarify, my current situation is I purchased my new ds920+ , which has been sitting in the corner untouched and unplugged since purchase about a month ago along with 4 brand new WD RED PLUS 6 TB drives that I have installed inside the NAS, but again have not begun to setup the machine just yet. I am still trying to sharpen my DSM software knowledge before I even begin to touch the machine.

But one thing that bothered me was how can I thoroughly confirm the health of these expensive four new 6 TB WD RED PLUS drives to be confident in their integrity before I begin the long process of setting up and moving all my data onto the NAS.

In my original post I also asked about scanning my current portable external hdd, but we can just keep the discussion to the new drives to avoid confusion.

WINDOWS 10 LAPTOP
iOS 15 PHONE
SYNOLOGY DS920+ (Not yet setup but planning to update to DSM7.1, and use SHR1, BTRFS)

My main use for this NAS is to migrate all my sensitive documents, files, and media currently stored and cloned onto two WD 4 TB portable passport hdd and move everything to the NAS for easy network access from my phone and laptop. Also backups of my laptop and iPhones onto the NAS.

I was dx with progressive neuromuscular disease and need faster and easier access to my sensitive documents without much effort as my physical functioning continues to progress. I would also like to share all my medical documents and my whole camera roll photos from my iPhone with my family in one centralized and organized place on the NAS.

I want to move away from my reliance on iCloud after I suddenly lost files in iCloud and was never able to retrieve them, which made me lose all faith in cloud storage. I also pay $20 a month to store all my family’s iPhone photos and backups which is too much. I plan to move everything onto the NAS with the help of imazing.

For now I mainly plan to use the NAS inside my home network and have no need for connection outside my network.
 
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@Hyland

for the mentioned data usage target:
- stay away from DSM7 (as some smart gents here)
- because you are familiar with WinOS, install HD Sentinel (advanced swiss knife for drives health check)
don’t be disturbed by GUI from 2005, it's a well-maintained software, including support for your own community. There is Free ver. available also. Mine is Pro (paid).
- you can check any connected drives (hdd, ssd, nvme) by any interface (sata, pcie, usb, ethernet) and check the health (basic to pro grade), repair (read/extract data from bad sectors, …)
- doesn’t matter if the disk is new = packed from the store or used. Include your external WD.
- you can also install HD Sentinel agent into your NAS (free)
then you can use more and trusted smartmontools services, than Syno has integrated into DSM.
Enjoy
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Last:
The investment in SATA / USB adapter (with an external power only) is always worth. You can attach directly any drive into your PC, e.g. for the first health check.
 
@Hyland

for the mentioned data usage target:
- stay away from DSM7 (as some smart gents here)
- because you are familiar with WinOS, install HD Sentinel (advanced swiss knife for drives health check)
don’t be disturbed by GUI from 2005, it's a well-maintained software, including support for your own community. There is Free ver. available also. Mine is Pro (paid).

- you can check any connected drives (hdd, ssd, nvme) by any interface (sata, pcie, usb, ethernet) and check the health (basic to pro grade), repair (read/extract data from bad sectors, …)
- doesn’t matter if the disk is new = packed from the store or used. Include your external WD.
- you can also install HD Sentinel agent into your NAS (free)

then you can use more and trusted smartmontools services, than Syno has integrated into DSM.
Enjoy
[automerge]1654065125[/automerge]
Last:
The investment in SATA / USB adapter (with an external power only) is always worth. You can attach directly any drive into your PC, e.g. for the first health check.
@jeyare Does synology give users the option to install other DSM versions besides DSM 7 such as DSM 6? Which version of DSM do you suggest or did you mean to stay away from DSM 7.1 and stick with 7.0?

Thanks for the rundown on the HD sentinel software. I may have used it long ago. It does sound familiar. I will give it a shot.
 
DSM6 vs DSM7
- DSM7 stay away completely (several reasons described in this forum)
- DSM6 is more stable from restrictions point of view used by Syno on ver 7
- for the usage described by you above it’s OK, till Syno will invent additional restrictions for users
- you can any time upgrade to the DSM7

re DSM choice:
you can choose last possible (automatic) or manual installation based on official Synology repository (below) downloaded in advance.
DSM


here is your specific pat file (contains your model type):
file: synology_geminilake_920+.pat

then use the Manual installation:
 

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