I would like to fill my 4TB with data then format it and repeat it again to make sure there are no defects with the drive or is there a better way to stress test a new HDD for defects?
Memtest86.com - Memory Diagnostic
This program should do it for you however chkdsk should also work
ChkDsk will search for broken sectors and repair it to run it press start and type in the search cmd hit enter
Then type chkdsk (followed by the drive letter i.e. C):/r
Hope this helps
If you want to Test your 4TB HDD so it's not necessary to fill the HDD first and then format it. Also Quick formating the drive wont show anything even if there's something wrong with the drive. What you can do is to completely wipe-out the data by formatting through Windows Diskpart and write zero to the sectors.
H2testw is the program you are looking for. It simply writes its own files to the memory device until it is completely full and then reads back that data again to see if stuff got lost, and can be looped and keep reading data forever if you want to keep running it for a while. If stuff does not get lost your drive is ok. (if stuff gets lost the program gives you a warning, also tells you write and read speeds)
It's the most common software used to test for USB flash drive scams (pendrives that lie to the OS about their capacity so they can be sold for more money), but it's pretty simple and works on any drive really.
If that's an internal drive it should be relatively fast, but 4 TB is a pretty hefty quantity of space to test. Likely doable if you run it overnight.
For Windows we use Chkdsk (CheckDisk). One of the tests it can do is a "full surface scan" which checks every sector for read/write capability. Run a chkdsk /r and it will scan, repair, and report any errors found on the drive.
You can't use software for testing flash drives and RAM on a spinning hard drive, as boogieboy correctly pointed out.
Ah! You see, I got lazy. I didn't read the whole description!
bobbafetthotmail is correct:
"Although, it is mainly aimed at USB devices, H2testw can also be used to scan hard disks (internal or external), network volumes or memory cards. So, as you can see, the program is quite versatile when it comes to the number of storage devices it can check for errors."
Each drive manufacturer comes with a testing utility, so for the best results, that's what I would use.
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