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In search of ... Disk Doctor equivalent & image analyzer/verifier ...

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barney:
You do not want to run a defragmenting tool on a volume you suspect has errors
-f0dder (February 10, 2011, 12:01 PM)
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Yeah, that's understood.  The quest is for a tool that can identify, yeah or nay, whether the disk does indeed have errors.  (I/O error is a development cop-out, covering a plethora of sins, many of which are not hardware related.)  What I'd like to find is something that can specifically pinpoint bad spots, then report them.  Chkdsk does not fit that bill.  Oh, it works well enough within certain limits, but it does not perform the function(s) I seek  :(.

As well, the i/o errors were reported by software images that I have no way to validate.  If every backup I make is suspect, there's little point to making a backup  :huh:. 

I do not know at this point, nor do I have any way to determine, whether the reported i/o errors are HD related, software related, or non-HD hardware related.  Until I can somehow narrow that field, I have no way of addressing the issue(s).  I simply do not like using shotgun methods on PC problems - even when all I have is a shotgun  :P.

4wd:
You haven't mentioned which ones you have tried, so:

HDDScan - Windows executable, reports S.M.A.R.T. and can do surface tests and S.M.A.R.T. tests.
MHDD - DOS, bootable images on site.
Victoria - Russian website, DOS version on site, Windows version available from MajorGeeks.  As well as normal surface tests in can start S.M.A.R.T. tests.
DiskTool - DOS, need to put on bootable media (from Bart, creator of PEbuilder).

For backup images, couldn't you mount them and then run a Windows based tester on them?
Or, generate a list of files with MD5 hashes and compare to live system file hashes?

barney:
I've tried so many over the years ... can't recall them all :-\.

HDDScan sounds familiar ... if I tried it, 'twas prolly an earlier version, so I'll check it - if it's the one I recall, I didn't like the reporting it did.

MHDD is not familiar at all, so that'll be one to check.

Victoria sounds familiar, 'cause of the Russian - naturally I downloaded the wrong one  ;D, but I'll check it again.

DiskTool I was never able to try, couldn't seem to build the bootable part.

As for the images, I've not found - prolly just me  :-[ - anything not vendor-specific.  If I get some mounting software, the MD5 thing sounds good, but a bit labour intensive?  I really don't know, as that one never occurred to me :-[.

I was able to use your AutoIT script to identify/fix a friends problem ... that's what got me started on my own stuff.  See?  It's all your fault  >:( :P :-*.

I'll pull down your suggestions, give them a try ... I can see this happening again in the future  :o.

Just a vagrant thought:  why is it we - OK, maybe it's just me  :( - can fix other peoples problems, but not our own  :P?

4wd:
As for the images, I've not found - prolly just me  :-[ - anything not vendor-specific.  If I get some mounting software, the MD5 thing sounds good, but a bit labour intensive?  I really don't know, as that one never occurred to me :-[.-barney (February 10, 2011, 07:42 PM)
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AFAICT, mounting the images using the vendors own software shouldn't be a problem since you're mainly interested in the file integrity within the image.

It should be relatively easy to create a script to recurse the directories in the mounted image providing a list of files with MD5 values, (there's probably a program that will do it already), let it run overnight.  Then take the same list of files, change the drive letter, (directory structure should be the same), and generate MD5 values for those.

An alternative is just mount the image and use Beyond Compare or WinMerge to do live comparison - which will take just as long but skips the intermediate creating MD5 hash step.

There is no quick way to do it unfortunately.

See?  It's all your fault  >:( :P :-*.
--- End quote ---

I'll expect your MD5 comparison script shortly then :D

Shades:
+1 for MHDD

A bootable CD/DVD which interface will take time to get through, that takes it time checking a disc, that is brutally honest about the state of your hard drive. A no-nonsense piece of software that will tell you exactly what is wrong, what is (too) slow etc.

A brilliant tool that you actually never should lay your eyes on, but are glad that you did in case of troubles.

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