Multiple reinitializations?

[Restoration]

Is it possible to reinitialize more than one drive at a time?

I'm about 38 hours into a single drive, with an estimated 13 hours to go.
I have 10 drives to reinitialize. Assuming they all take a similar amount of time, it will be around 3 weeks to get through them all, if I do them one at a time.

[hdsentinel]

Yes of course: in Hard Disk Sentinel Pro 5.01, when you select Disk menu -> Surface test, you can select the test type and there is a button "Multiple disk drives".

By that, it is possible to multi-select drives, to start the same test on 2, 3 or any number of drives at the same time.

[Restoration]

Thank you!
I overlooked that button entirely.

[1024mb]

Sorry for reopening this topic but I have a question. Lets say I have already started a Surface test on a disk, can I start another one (on a new Surface test window) with another drive?

Also, would running test on multiple drives at the same time make the test slower?
I'm asking this because sometimes when I copy some files from a drive to another drive and the I copy other files from another drive to other drive they became slow, with both operations together giving 170MB/s instead of both of them reaching that speed individually. Is that a Windows limitation or maybe the SATA ports on my motherboard? They all are SATA3 6Gbps, they all are with good temps (35ºC or less).

Thanks.

[hdsentinel]

Yes of course, you can any time open Disk menu -> Surface test and start any test (same or different type) on different disk drive.
So you can have multiple tests running at the same time.

Yes, as you wrote, in some cases multiple tests may make the progress slower if the controller bandwidth is divided between the disk drives.
This can happen also during any file copy operation too.

For example, consider the following scenario:

1) you use an USB 3.0 controller with an USB 3.0 hub
2) you connect multiple disk drives to the USB 3.0 hub and start tests on multiple disk drives (eg. 3-4) at the same time

Then the total bandwidth will be divided between the disk drives (plus there is overhead) so the disk tests may be much slower than expected.
Testing (for example) two hard disks with an USB 3.0 hub may be fine.
But testing more hard disks on the same USB hub (or testing multiple SSDs at the same time) may result more noticeable performance decrease.

The same may happen if you (for example) use a PCI x1 (e)SATA controller card and similarly test multiple hard disk drives / SSDs connected.

Usually integrated controllers do not suffer from performance degradations (but it depends on the chipset, driver).
Sometimes the overall bandwidth of the controller can be a limiting factor.


> I'm asking this because sometimes when I copy some files from a drive to another drive and the
> I copy other files from another drive to other drive they became slow, with both operations
> together giving 170MB/s instead of both of them reaching that speed individually.
> Is that a Windows limitation or maybe the SATA ports on my motherboard?
> They all are SATA3 6Gbps, they all are with good temps (35ºC or less).

No, generally there is no limitation in Windows for this and also the value should be far from the SATA3 6Gbps limits.

Please note that during file copy, other factors can affect the performance:
- file system fragmentation
- file location: on almost empty HDD, files may be located on the beginning of the disk surface which is much faster than the end
- file size (eg. smaller files vs large files) and type as it may be scanned automatically by antivirus software, causing slower operation

Generally the Performance page in Hard Disk Sentinel designed exactly to allow you to find such bottlenecks. By checking not only the actual transfer speed but also the "Current Disk Activity", you can see which drive is performing at higher level (probably 100%) and which drive is working at lower level (which means that it could be faster if the other drive can also perform faster).

By this, you can specifically check the drive and attempt (for example) to attempt to connect to different controller to prevent overloading of the controller and thus improving performance.

[1024mb]

Yes of course, you can any time open Disk menu -> Surface test and start any test (same or different type) on different disk drive.
So you can have multiple tests running at the same time.

Yes, as you wrote, in some cases multiple tests may make the progress slower if the controller bandwidth is divided between the disk drives.
This can happen also during any file copy operation too.

For example, consider the following scenario:

1) you use an USB 3.0 controller with an USB 3.0 hub
2) you connect multiple disk drives to the USB 3.0 hub and start tests on multiple disk drives (eg. 3-4) at the same time

Then the total bandwidth will be divided between the disk drives (plus there is overhead) so the disk tests may be much slower than expected.
Testing (for example) two hard disks with an USB 3.0 hub may be fine.
But testing more hard disks on the same USB hub (or testing multiple SSDs at the same time) may result more noticeable performance decrease.

The same may happen if you (for example) use a PCI x1 (e)SATA controller card and similarly test multiple hard disk drives / SSDs connected.

Usually integrated controllers do not suffer from performance degradations (but it depends on the chipset, driver).
Sometimes the overall bandwidth of the controller can be a limiting factor.


> I'm asking this because sometimes when I copy some files from a drive to another drive and the
> I copy other files from another drive to other drive they became slow, with both operations
> together giving 170MB/s instead of both of them reaching that speed individually.
> Is that a Windows limitation or maybe the SATA ports on my motherboard?
> They all are SATA3 6Gbps, they all are with good temps (35ºC or less).

No, generally there is no limitation in Windows for this and also the value should be far from the SATA3 6Gbps limits.

Please note that during file copy, other factors can affect the performance:
- file system fragmentation
- file location: on almost empty HDD, files may be located on the beginning of the disk surface which is much faster than the end
- file size (eg. smaller files vs large files) and type as it may be scanned automatically by antivirus software, causing slower operation

Generally the Performance page in Hard Disk Sentinel designed exactly to allow you to find such bottlenecks. By checking not only the actual transfer speed but also the "Current Disk Activity", you can see which drive is performing at higher level (probably 100%) and which drive is working at lower level (which means that it could be faster if the other drive can also perform faster).

By this, you can specifically check the drive and attempt (for example) to attempt to connect to different controller to prevent overloading of the controller and thus improving performance.

Thank you four such detailed explanation. You answered my question and more.