A long time ago I wrote a program for stress testing hard disks. You can download the modern version of it here: https://github.com/ncw/stressdisk https://githu

A long time ago I wrote a program for stress testing hard disks. You can download the modern version of it here: https://github.com/ncw/stressdisk https://github.com/ncw/stressdisk It got used a lot to soak tests disk for servers that were going into production or being shipped out to far away places. However it quite soon became apparent that a lot of the errors weren't caused by bad disks at all, but rather by bad RAM. It even discovered a set of bad RAM for 200 computers which passed all the manufacturers tests but failed when in use. Moral of the story: if you care about data integrity check your RAM as well as your disks! I run memtest86 then stressdisk on any new systems I'm building. Also, testing RAM is hard! Memtest86 does an excellent job, much better than the manufacturers tests.