Data Lifeguard Diagnostics in a virtual machine?

Hello,

Sometimes, I buy three or more hard drives at a time. Before I put them into service, I do a full surface scan. I can scan them on two machines, sometimes three (if third is available) but it’s a waste since all three have to be on for just that task. Would it be possible, to run Data Lifeguard in a virtual environment (Virtual Box, UnRAID, VMware)?

I would setup the hard disk to not be mounted on the host and to be presented as a physical disk to the virtual machine. The disk will be straight from the factory (no partitions, no data on the disk). I tried this in VMware on a 4TB drive. VMware says that 2TB is the max for VMware workstation, but as I am not partitioning or provisioning it in the VM (just scanning it), it appears to be seen in Data Lifeguard, but reported as a VMware SCSCI disk (instead of identifying it by WD). SMART data was unavailable from the disk but it was able to perform a quick scan and start a full surface scan.

So I guess my question is, if the VM instance is scanning a physical disk presented to the VM, will the scan be accurate? I’m assuming I would have received some error if it was not.

Again, want to be clear, the disks being scanned (virtually) are straight out of the box - no data, no partitions, not initialized, no drive letter assigned, etc. No risk of losing any data on them because they are not in use yet.

I do see that someone asked the question if Data Lifeguard Diagnostics can run multiple instances of itself on a physical machine, but the response in the forum said that it was not advisable, otherwise, I’d just do that.

Thanks,