The
Hitachi Drive Fitness test is very thorough. It is the test that Falcon had me download and run before they would replace one of my Seagate 500 GB SATA drives.
Only problem I have with it is the same problem I have with the memtest86+ diagnostic test for RAM: There are no reports, no results that you can save. Grrr. In this day and age it makes little sense to me to have diagnostic tests that only show results on the screen, but that is what the Hitachi Drive Fitness test does.
I used my digital camera and took pictures of the screen every so often.
You have to download an image onto a CD and then boot from that CD to run the Hitachi test. Same with the memory test, memtest86+. And the test is definitely not a quickie! Depending on the size of the drive it can take several hours. My 500 GB drive took about 8 to 10 hours.
Jim
PS - The test does not wipe your disk. That being said, make sure to backup all data on the disk before running any diagnostic test. Better safe than sorry!