Folks,
I wonder if it is better to set the below SMART testing (Thorough) as daily or monthly?
Will this have a detrimental effect on the disk’s lifetime, or is it better not to run it since RAID will take care of the drive anyway?
Because this feature QNAP DA Drive Analyzer app can only be used with paid subscription for each drive only.
Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
Between the built in functions of the drive and the RAID monitoring of the NAS, you likely don’t need to run the tests too often, but it is really a personal user choice.
The quick test doesn’t take long or many resources, so I run this weekly.
The full test can take quite long depending on the size and speed of the drives and NAS that you have, but I find, for my purposes, that it is worthwhile to run monthly.
Of course if you run into or suspect other drive issues you can change the frequency of the testing as required.
@dosborne ,
Does testing cause hard drive wear and tear more often, or just impact performance only?
Just from my own experience, since the drive has to work harder, there must be some extra usage. However, drives are designed for this. Whether this equates into shortening the life span by a few minutes or a few months, I don’t know. Always have a backup strategy. A new drive fails just as often as an old one.
Its the same issue with a drive “sleeping”. This “saves” surface and motor in some respects, but increases the start/stop count which is just as bad.
If you don’t run the tests, you won’t know a drive is starting to fail. If you do run the tests, maybe it will fail sooner, or at least you will know sooner. Only you can decide what is right for you.
You also have to factor in how long it takes to run the tests. My monthly tests/scrubs take over 24 hours to run, so isn’t even an option for daily.
Everything causes wear and tear. Having the NAS plugged into the wall is wear and tear.
But you are only going to trip SMART attributes 2 ways.
Would you rather find out drive health with tests or your live data?
Yes, that does make sense guys. I assume the QNAP QTS OS will always notify the admin of any potential drive issue or SMART warning before the drive starts to fail anyway.
NEVER count on being notified in advance of a problem. Many times, the errors come too late or are not recoverable. If you monitor the stats and reports from the drive, you MAY see a trend about a surface failing, but a catastrophic failure may not display a warning.
ALWAYS have multiple levels of backups matched to the value and importance of your data, and how hard it would be to recreate, and what the impact would be of total loss.
