What is Reddit's opinion of
StableBit Scanner?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ StableBit Scanner website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
25 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
I use stablebit scanner. It gives a nice rundown of the values, along with a simple green checkmark if they're OK or a red X if they're bad or indicative of a problem. If you click on a value (like "reallocated sectors" in the screenshot) it provides an explanation of what it means and what to watch out for. The program will also physically scan your disks periodically in the background and throw a warning if there are any unreadable sectors (something which won't necessarily trigger a SMART warning). You can even have it email you when it sees any kind of problem, so you don't have to manually check regularly.
It's not free, but it's well worth the $30 if you have a lot of disks and want to catch failing drives before they actually fail.
You would need something like Stablebit Scanner that not only reads SMART data, but does a proactive read of all the drive data at set intervals.
For your drive, it would have flagged unreadable blocks during a scheduled read.
Additionally, it probably would have triggered the drive to show SMART errors, as it would have failed to read data a few times them flagged that as an error.
If you want to check for data integrity then either just do a file checksum sweep manually with an app (there's many free or inexpensive ones). Or use SnapRAID to store the data parity and checksum of the drives and do a full SnapRAID scrub it will verify integrity of your drives. SnapRAID requires an entire hard drive itself, and needs to be at least as large as your largest data drive. But it can recover data if sectors are bad.
Otherwise a typical NAS unit will have a data integrity/checksum option available.
Only way to really know if a hard drive is failing is to do a full surface scan. Seagate and Western Digital both have SMART scan tools that you can use.
Or if you're using Windows, then also check out Stablebit Scanner: https://stablebit.com/Scanner
You can use it to scan your entire drive surface for errors. It doesn't check data integrity, just makes sure your disk is in good health. This takes a long time because it scans every sector on the drive for errors. Maybe use it to scan your drives every other time you connect them.
You sound a lot like me.
I had the exact same idea even down to the fireproof safe. Sadly, fireproof safes won't actually keep your drive safe (as I learned from this subreddit). In the event of a fire, it will still get too hot to keep the data. I'd recommend keeping the backup drive in a different physical location if possible.
As far as monitoring, I am looking at using Stablebit Scanner and Stablebit Drive Pool (this will pool the drives together into one virtual drive but you can still access the drives individually to make backups).
Not sure I'd call it enterprise grade, but I use Stablebit Scanner, its pretty simple but solid. Even emails me when the drives are getting too hot.
if you are going to use windows for housing your media, i highly suggest looking at https://stablebit.com/Scanner. great product that frequently gets brought up over in /r/DataHoarder for windows based OSs.
>StableBit
It claims it can state which files are damaged, if they are. https://stablebit.com/Scanner
I've also seen reports that the software is essentially dead. Is it still being updated? I purchased a HD Sentinel licence for 5 devices and use it on my server, but looking at alternatives and StableBit Scanner seems like a good option - especially with the US$60 offer for new customers (all three software packages).
That shows 1 uncorrectable sector with none reallocated. But if you were to scan the disk (like with HDDSCAN: https://hddscan.com/ or with Stablebit Scanner: https://stablebit.com/Scanner) it will likely show more problematic sectors. It doesn't know what's bad until it tries to read the sectors. The drive will automatically try to correct data off the bad sectors and move them to good ones.
That being said, get everything you can get off the drive right away that's important to you, then scan. Drive is probably toast though.
If you want Windows, use:
FORMAT E: /X /P:1 /FS:NTFS
Obviously E: is the drive letter of the drive you want to format.
Note that this will completely erase the drive contents.
This will:
/XDismount the drive/P:1Zero every sector and then write a random number on every sector/FS:NTFSwill format as NTFS
You can change /P to any number if you want it to write multiple times.
Then you can run a CHKDSK E: (change E: to the drive letter you want to check)
This will alert you to any bad sectors.
Note that running both of these will take a good 36-48 hours total on a 12 or 14TB drive.
Or you can get Stablebit Scanner (free for 30 days) and scan the drive for bad sectors: https://stablebit.com/Scanner
Depends on what you mean by "in use".
Is this a production environment where a failure will cost you money or your job? If so, then you do have time for that. If not, then fuck it.
Is this irreplaceable data that isn't backed up anywhere else? If so, back it up first. If not, then fuck it.
Personally, I don't run any tests before sticking a new drive in my server. I use stablebit scanner to monitor my drives and test them periodically, letting me know if something is starting to circle the drain (usually) before anything actually breaks. I use snapraid to generate parity "backups", so even if I do lose a drive without warning, I won't have actually lost more than a day's worth of new data, and nothing that can't be re-acquired.
You need to scan the hard drive surface to really get an idea if it's going bad.
CrystalDiskInfo is good but can only report on what it knows. Until you've scanned your drive you won't know for sure if there's failing sectors or corrupt data.
In linux you can use badblocks from command line
In Windows you can use chkdsk <driveletter>: /r from command line or from windows explorer right click the drive > properties > tools > check
Or use something like Stablebit Scanner (https://stablebit.com/Scanner) or HDDScan (https://hddscan.com/)
Then you can review CrystalDiskInfo with confidence it's scanned every sector and giving you good information.
Storing your data on a parity RAID of some sort like ZFS or BTRFS or UnRAID with parity, or even just using SnapRAID, so you can check your data for integrity as well on a regular basis.
Windows - Full format drive:
FORMAT Q: /FS:NTFS /V:DISKNAME /X /R:1
Q: = drive letter of external disk, change to whatever that is /FS:NTFS = Format with NTFS file system /V:DISKNAME = DISKNAME is whatever you want to name volume after format /X = Force dismount before format /R:1 = optional, but full format will write 0's, adding /R:1 will write random data after all 0's
Obviously this will completely delete anything on that disk. This will take a long time, like 24 hours for a 12TB disk, double that if you add /R:1 because it will write 0's then write random data.
After full format use CHKDSK Q: /SCAN
Again, this will take a long time since it's scanning the full surface of the disk.
Or download Stablebit Scanner which is free for 30 days fully functional: https://stablebit.com/Scanner
Has a nice GUI and you can pause scanning at any time and even use the drive while scanning with little to no impact.
Using Windows if you really want to hammer it, then do a windows format command with /P:1 flag. It will write zeros to every block, and then write random data to every block. Use /P:2 it will write zeros on one pass, then two passes with random data, etc.
Then check out Stablebit Scanner (https://stablebit.com/Scanner) and scan the disk. It's free for 30 days, but I found it useful (also bought their DrivePool) for scanning my disks on a regular schedule so I bought it.
As one of the few using windows server instead of linux, I've found stablebit scanner to be more than worth the money. It's extremely comprehensive, does regular full-drive scans to detect errors/bit-rot, and provides email notifications of any errors. In the ~4 years I've been running it, I've never had to rebuild data from a failed drive (knock on wood) because scanner has always notified me of problems well before an actual failure, and I was always able to proactively move everything off of the failing drive.
This probably sounds like a shill post, but it's not. I'm just super thrilled going from 2-3 scary, time-consuming rebuilds per year to 0 because scanner is keeping tabs on my disks.
No way to predict how it will last for years, but a full format or writing zeroes across the drive (windows FORMAT <DRIVE LETTER>:\ /P:0 FS:NTFS) and then a full scan CHKDSK <DRIVE LETTER>: /f should tell you if there's anything wrong with it out of the gate. (CHKDSK without /f or /r flag will scan and just report errors, so up to you if you include it or not)
Or use something like Stablebit Scanner instead of chkdsk, which has a fully functional 30 day trial. Best idea is to scan every 30-60 days to ensure drive integrity. Oh, and make backups of your data regularly too.
I bought a N300 8TB drive from Amazon in January. After doing a thorough burn in, I added it to my storage array. By mid-February the drive was reporting bad sectors. If memory recalls it was only a few, but even one bad sector is too many as far as I'm concerned. I RMA'd the drive which wasn't the easiest process, but wasn't the worst I've ever had either in my RMA history. 5/10 annoyance factor. The RMA policy at the time was to refund the purchase price via a VISA debit card. Now, this is awesome if your drive fails at the end of the warranty period as your dollar is going to go much further after 3 years. But, if you RMA the drive a month after purchasing it, especially after getting a good deal, it's less great.
I replaced it with a Western Digital RED drive purely because it was the best deal again at the time I needed one. But, I would buy a Toshiba N300 again.
Though, since my experience with them is short and fraught with peril, I would absolutely require a SMART and data corruption regular scan on any I bought in the future. You didn't mention what operating system you're on, but if you're on Windows I would highly recommend Stablebit Scanner for this task. As well as data redundancy, but that's a personal decision.
Best of luck!
Pending, reallocation and especially uncorrectable sectors are all serious pre-fail flags (last one is pure fail). I've RMA'd even at pending and never gotten a refusal. It's a slippery slope that always leads downwards just in various speeds and variety. Pending is also a serious performance hitter if the sectors are actually damaged. Manufacturers hide a certain amount of reallocations as well that don't even show up in SMART until that level is reached, which is why it's considered pre-fail when it actually starts showing up in SMART.
I can recommend Stablebit Scanner if using Windows if you want the outmost and simplistic warning system that will surface scan the drives every 30 days by default, which in turn triggers a SMART warning and e-mails you to take action. Along with temperature warnings.
Pure SMART monitors just lets you know when a bad sector is actually triggered, but surface scans is nice to have because you can preactively find it before saving valuable data on it. Hardware RAID has these things implemented while software folks often need to script/self-engineer scrubbing routines etc.
> Stablebit Scanner is pretty good: https://stablebit.com/Scanner
That's good, but only if you're NOT planning to use Storage Spaces. Otherwise, it'll disable SMART monitoring - which is what you need if you're concerned about reallocated sectors, etc. Since OP is on Windows 10, that's worth putting into consideration.
I experienced that issue first-hand and here's confirmation from the dev: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/adpx9j/any_recommendations_for_smart_status_monitoring/edl84b1/
I don't use StableBit Scanner, however reading the features page here - https://stablebit.com/Scanner/Features - doesn't mention checksums at all. It looks like it just checks if your disk hardware is OK, and that the filesystem is fine.
So, no, StableBit Scanner won't detect bit rot.
Now, theoretically, modern drives do store a checksum for each block (not file), and a checksum mismatch would therefore show up in a SMART check, that StableBit Scanner would flag...
Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with a per-file checksum, and some erasure codes to help rebuild any corruption.
Easy enough to do on Linux/FreeBSD with AIDE, mtree, PAR2, etc.
Not sure what's a good option for Windows though I'm afraid! Maybe script up something with http://md5deep.sourceforge.net/ ?
Speccy. I'd have gone with StableBit Scanner, but this one had the actual age in the details (StableBit Scanner only shows the age in the list of hard disks).
I personally like a product called "Scanner" from Stablebit. It's not free, but they offer a full featured 30 day trial. So you could always download it, and give it a spin. At the very least you'll be able to check that disk.
I use stablebit scanner for my Windows Server. Can be installed without desktop experience. It constantly monitors the smart data of your HDD's and scans performs test on a schedule. Not sure If you can get it to always email you the results of every test but it will email you the results if it detects a drive may be failing. You can pair it with drivepool as well which will move the data off the drive if it detects a potential failure. Not great for an OS drive but awesome for your actual storage.
StableBit Scanner
An advanced hard disk surface scanner, monitor and more.
State of art tool, actually.
There's a trial installation with full features, maybe crack it from there.
Bit late, but I'll toss the Stablebit software on the pile:
DrivePool - software which allows you to pool drives, kinda like a RAID, but not exactly. Your drives appear as a single drive from the computer's perspective, and you can mirror across drives on a per-drive folder basis, but also still have the benefit of being able to plug the drive in another computer and have it be readable, and be able to plug in new drives and have it regenerate without loading access to files while it's happening.
Scanner - a bit more typical, scanner for hard drives. Periodically touches the bits so you get early notice of failures. Also easy readable SMART data.
Cloud drive - a way to have all your various cloud services available as hard drives from windows' perspective, encrypted so the data in the cloud looks like junk without it. Especially neat when combined with Drive Pool, as you can make all your cloud services look like one drive.
DrivePool can ping all active disks to help you identify a missing disk. Their scanner software can ping individual disks to help you locate stuff. You can also do that by just copying a big file to the non-pooled section of the volume you're trying to identify.
It's a good idea to keep a paper record of volume names, disk serial numbers, and installed location. A tool that can collateral disk#, serial#, volumes, and mount points can help.