testing of drives!

[bruce]

Morning --

Got a situation where we have a number of used/older dell boxes
running centos/fedora (should be the same process of testing the
drives).

Some of the boxes have already had the OS installed/drive
formatted/patitioned/etc.. Some have dual drives.

We realized that we should have tested each drive prior to
installing/formatting/etc..

So, now we're wondering what's the best/god way to test the drives.

We'd like to put together a basic process to allow us to test the
given drive, preferably with the drive in the box/running/formatted so
we don't have to test the drive in a separate box!!

So, any input we can get on software to use, articles to review, etc
in order to get a stable test process to get a good idea of the health
of our drives would be cool

Issues to consider::
-We have running drives, that are partitioned/formatted
-we have drives in systems that we haven't started to use
   some primary formatted/some are installed as 2nd drives

we need a way to be able to test all of the drives, preferably
 without taking the drive(s) out of a box and testing them in a separate box

Concern is/are:
 -bad sectors/blocks
 -health of drive
 -capacity of drive
 -etc..

we've looked into hdparam/smartctl

thanks guys!