hard drive burn-in

[Jack Coats]

SpinRite has been my favorites over the years.  Nothing else really 
compares on a level I am willing
to pay for.  SMART is good to use if you have drives that support it, 
but you have to monitor it.

None of this removes the need for good and regular backups, that are 
tested occasionally.
I can give you the whole disaster recovery preparedness talk, but we 
have all heard it before, so
it is included here by reference.  And keeping DR backups is different 
than 'awe darn, I erased a file
can you get it back for me' daily backups.  DR backups are meant to be 
whatever it takes to keep
the company from going out of business.

Most new drives I use, I do not test, more than a good format.  Yes, I 
get bit on occasion, but
these are on my time now days, when I did it for a bank full time, just 
the process of building an
array over them did a pretty good job, and most of the drives there were 
in large arrays.
3 drive raid is a waste IMHO, use at least 5 to get proper redundancy / 
price / performance
even with a good hardware controller.  Software RAID is OK, but proper 
hardware is preferred
for critical stuff.  AND it MUST be monitored.  Email/page with problems 
immediately was
my suggested method.  We did have some non-critical we checked by eye 
twice a day, but if they
went down no one lost a paycheck.  I like the concept of RAID-6 (really 
raid5 with two parity tracks)
or at least raid-5 with a hot or a spare that can be brought online 
automatically.

For boot drives, mirroring, again monitored and tested, works well (for 
raid fanatics, that is RAID-1)

I hope this helped a little.