Question: I found Seagate Ironwolf 4TB drives on Amazon for $15 less than the WD Reds. But having terrible luck with the quality of the drives being shipped. The first one could not even be formatted (Seatools said cyclic redundancy check failed). The replacement drive could be formatted by my Mac, but the Short Generic failed.
Here’s the bizzarre part: both of these drives are showing up as the same S/N in Seatools – and not what is printed on the label on the hard drives. This is why the Seatools log file got appended. Here is the log file; note the failed tests on two different dates – they are on two different hard drives. Can someone help me understand what is going on?
1/17/2020 8:23:17 AM
Model: 008
Serial: B85910000000
Firmware: 0
Short DST – Started 1/17/2020 8:23:16 AM
Short DST – Pass 1/17/2020 8:23:26 AM
Identify – Started 1/17/2020 8:24:01 AM
Long Generic – Started 1/17/2020 8:29:17 AM
Long Generic – FAIL 1/17/2020 8:29:26 AM
SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4
Short Generic – Started 1/21/2020 10:50:32 AM
Short Generic – FAIL 1/21/2020 10:51:25 AM
SeaTools Test Code: 6C9AC2A4
Answer:It’s hard to know what the drive is doing during its DST (Drive Self Test). In fact I can find no reference to short/long generic tests in the ATA standard.
http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2007/D1699r4a-ATA8-ACS.pdf (page 275 of PDF)
Here are two proposals that were considered for inclusion in the standard:
http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2002/e01139r2.pdf
http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/technical/e01137r0.pdf
ISTM that the definitions and internal implementations of these tests is vendor specific. That is, each HDD manufacturer has its own way of doing things.
So, to answer your question, I don’t know exactly what is involved in each test. However, the standard does say this:
The SMART Selective self-test routine is an optional self-test routine. … This self-test routine shall include the initial tests performed by the Extended self-test routine plus a selectable read scan.
So the short test scans small areas of the surface, while the extended test scans the full surface, among other things.
The “Self-test execution status values” (page 280) would suggest that the electrical elements, read elements and servo are tested. There is even a provision for detecting handling damage.
Unfortunately SeaTools did not report a status value, so it’s hard to say why the error occurred. Instead you could use smartmontools (Linux) to examine the “SMART Self-Test Log (Log Address 06h)” (see page 416). Smartmontools may identify the LBA that caused the test failure.