Ask Slashdot: How do you go about testing a storage medium?

g7a writes: I've been given the task of testing new hardware for the use in our servers. For things like memory I can run it through things such as memtest for a few day's to ascertain if there are any issues with the new memory. However i've hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to testing hard disks there seems to be no definitive method for doing so. Aside from the obvious S.M.A.R.T tests ( i.e. long offline ) are there any systems out there for testing hard disks to a similar level to that of memtest or any tried and tested methods for testing storage media ?