IP address help for noob please

[Robert Trevellyan]

I guess there is a utility I can run under widoze to test the USB drives before committing to install them?

If you want to test them before shucking, I would see what the manufacturer's website has on offer. WD, for example, has a tool that can test their USB drives.

If you're going to shuck them anyway, you can fire up an Ubuntu Live DVD and use Disk Utility to run SMART tests and the command-line to run badblocks. You can also run SMART tests and badblocks from the FreeNAS command-line.