Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Excellent Drives. I've been running a variety of WD Red, Green, and Seagate Archive Drives for the better part of several years, and I thought that I would share some useful advice for things to watch out for when buying new drives, and detecting infant mortality. First thing to look for is to observe the packaging the drive arrives in. It is industry practice to ship one or more drives in boxes that are made to perfectly fit the drive. Inside the box, the drive should be suspended with two plastic holders. These holders suspend the drive and dampen any drops the package may experience during transit. (Bulk orders (15+) may be shipped in a single larger box with foam cut-out arrays). Secondly, when installing the drives, make sure that your hands are clean. Give them a wash, or better yet, wear gloves. Avoid transferring finger/hand oil to the drives so that hot-spots aren't created. Thirdly, once the drives are installed, give them a full, long format. You can run 1, 3, 5, (or even more) passes on the disks. This ensures that every single sector of the drives gets written to. Once the format is complete, look up the SMART data, and check the values for anything alarming. If a drive suffered damage in shipping, now is when it may be noticeable. Compare the values to your other drives. Start-up times, head parks and so fourth may vary slightly so there's nothing to be worried about a little deviation there, but pay attention to failed reads, reallocated sectors, and RUEs. Granted, all of this advice should be taken with a grain of salt since SMART values are not the silver bullet to predict drive failure, but this testing should be a good indicator on whether or not a drive is ready for production use. Above all else, remember that backups are your friend.