Originally Posted by rowan

I have several drives so I keep a few spares. Rather than leaving them in their factory packaging until they're needed I open them and give them a good thrashing for at least 7 days. My test program reads and writes random bits of data to give the platter surface and head subsystem a good workout.

Some say that infant mortality is a myth but I've had a few drives die within a week. Given the typical expected lifetime of a HD I don't think that 7 days of heavy testing is going to hurt, and if it picks up an early failure then it's definitely a benefit.