Great so that would account for it. That’s a relief. Always best to do a proper wipe prior to new fs / or partitioning, especially if the last fs was a whole disk variant (rare) and one is to there after partition.
Yes this is a nice, if rather time consuming practice. We have an element of this in our: Pre-Install Best Practice (PBP) doc by way of the Wiping Disks (DBAN) subsection. Not really a proper stress test though, more of a write to all parts of the disk kind of thing. If you’ve got any suggestions on other more ‘proper’ stress tests, they could be put as entries in that same doc. I know a few programs exist for this but I’m not overly familiar with any.
Thanks for working through this one and let us know how it goes.