I will just paste my standard procedure when I onboard any new (or used) drive: Everybody has their own skin care HDD check routine. This is mine:

I first check the SMART status with CrystalDisk, after this a short smart test, full surface check with Macrorit, full h2testw run, CrystalDiskMark, and then I check with CrystalDisk once again if anything besides power on hours did change.

Will take some days for a large drive but in terms of work hours we talk about less than 5 minutes and it covers pretty much anything without being too excessive.

shopping takes forever because there aren’t big-box stores

War selbst nie in einem US Walmart oder so, aber spart das wirklich Zeit? Gut, wenn die so ein Vollsortiment haben, dass du nicht noch zu 2-3 Spezialgeschäften musst, dann vielleicht, sonst klingt das aber eher nach langer Fahrt und dann ewig lange durch den Laden laufen.