Hard Disk Monitoring

This is a new hard drive. Anyone know how long an extended test takes for 14 TB?

Hard Disk Model ID : WDC WD140EDFZ-11A0VA0
Firmware Revision : 81.00A81
Total Size : 13351928 MB

If you have the hard disk installed, please check the Information page -> S.M.A.R.T. details section, there should be something similar:

Extended Self-test Estimated Time . . . . . . . : 1619 minutes

This shows the estimated time for the Disk menu -> Extended self test function, as provided by the manufacturer (assuming that there is no disk activity, no reads/writes during the extended self test).

According the capacity and model, this may be around 1500 minutes too, the 1619 minutes provided by WD140EMFZ model.

Thanks.

I do have it installed but still fairly new to the program. That reminds me, something else I haven't looked up if this is an option or not.

Power State: Inactive (without monitoring). Not sure if this is something I need to modify.

I have three 4TB hard drive several years old never formatted since I bought them new. This 14 TB drive is allowing me to properly organize them by copying it all to the new drive. Since it's rare I have this opportunity would it be a good idea to perform a low-level format on each. If so, any recommendations on the file system. I have a mixture of NTFS, exFAT and FAT32. Also GBT or MBR? I am not going to be booting off any of these.

Regards,
Chris.

> Power State: Inactive (without monitoring). Not sure if this is something I need to modify.

No, of course no need (and not possible) to modify.

This line suggests that the disk drive is now idle : it does not perform any disk reads/writes now, so could be in sleep/standby state. If Hard Disk Sentinel detects and displays this status, it means it does not attempt to "wake up", just for the monitoring purposes (just to read its health/temperature values).
Until the drive will wake up to perform some activity, the last known status/values remain displayed.

Yes, personally I'd surely perform some testing, for example as described at:
Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> Hard disk health is low or recently changed or I just installed a new (used) hard disk. How can I perform a deep analysis?
( https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests )
as these would reveal and stabilize any issue or confirm if the drive is generally working correctly. One of the recommended tests (Disk -> Surface test -> Reinitialize disk surface ) is a very intensive testing method, a simpler function is usually (incorrectly) called as low-level-format in other tools.

For storage (non-boot) drives personally I prefer MBR for compatibility purposes but you can use MBR / GPT. I'd format with NTFS as it safer than exFAT/FAT32.

Thank you so much. In my entire I.T. career I've never been able able to ask these types of specific questions about PC hard drives. Even if my choice is correct, having some verification of that makes me feel better about the safety of my data. Computers come and go but my data is unique. Photos and art going back to the invention of the Commodore Amiga and Lightwave modeling software, about 1995. I still have BBS's data from 1989.

Does the standard version of Hard Disk Sentinel allow for the modification of a boot record from GBT to MBR?

I completely understand and agree. We can keep documents, images, personal/business documents for 10-20 years or even more and these files are more and more valuable for us. This is why we need to take care and protect them in all possible ways.

Hard Disk Sentinel does not really have functions to manage partitions, for example to change the boot record from MBR or GPT.

Hard Disk Sentinel (even the standard version) can help to clear the contents of the disk drive: by using (for example) the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test, you can clear all sectors. Then the disk drive will appear as a very new, so in Windows Disk Management, you can initialise the disk drive again and select the preferred method (MBR / GPT) and then create+format new partition(s).

Thanks.
I am doing just that. I am on 2 of 8 in the Reinitialize disk surface process. So far so good.

That's all for now on this topic. Got my work cut out. 8 TB to consolidate, organize, distribute to newly formatted drives and back-up.

My 1st type of data storage was a cassette tape on the Atari computer with a cartridge for an OS in 1980. I learned programming because if you wanted to play a game, you got a magazine and typed in the code, every time.

Oh, good old days
I know what do you mean and remember the cassette tapes (and terrible long load times).
My first "PC" was a ZX Spectrum, how I loved it