Initialize before certify?

Yes only because certify wipes the disk to "new" condition, so anything on there is removed. You need to initialize after a certify to use it again.

@softraid-support Meaning I'd have to re-certify it?  I have 4 brand new drives. I guess what I'm asking is should I initialize them and then run certify? 

@lsl 

these are two totally different functions. Certify is a long term test to ensure your drives are reliable. You only need to certify once. It leaves the drives totally zero'd out.

Initialize places a partition map on the disks, so you can create a SoftRAID volume.