Hello.
Can running a short self-test on an extremely slowed down and busy system/HDD, possibly damage the HDD (or it's data) in any way? Or is it still completely safe?
Thank you
Running a short self-test on a very slowed down (busy/active) system... Is this possibly dangerous?
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Re: Running a short self-test on a very slowed down (busy/active) system... Is this possibly dangerous?
Hello,
This is completely safe.
Generally the Disk menu -> Short self test / Extended self test functions are hardware self tests of the disk drive: they run "internally" by the firmware of the disk drive when the drive is idle (not performing any reads/writes). So if a system is really busy (eg. constant disk reads/writes) then the worst thing you'll see that the Short disk test will run for VERY (really) long time: maybe hours or days (!) instead of some minutes because the disk test can't (or just very slowly) advance. But it does not affect the operation (does not slow down the system) and can't cause damage to the stored data.
Usually the short / extended self test would stop immediately on the first error - so if the drive is not perfect, then this test reveals that - and you can perform other tests (eg. Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test) to scan the whole drive.
This is completely safe.
Generally the Disk menu -> Short self test / Extended self test functions are hardware self tests of the disk drive: they run "internally" by the firmware of the disk drive when the drive is idle (not performing any reads/writes). So if a system is really busy (eg. constant disk reads/writes) then the worst thing you'll see that the Short disk test will run for VERY (really) long time: maybe hours or days (!) instead of some minutes because the disk test can't (or just very slowly) advance. But it does not affect the operation (does not slow down the system) and can't cause damage to the stored data.
Usually the short / extended self test would stop immediately on the first error - so if the drive is not perfect, then this test reveals that - and you can perform other tests (eg. Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test) to scan the whole drive.