Thorough harddisk checking.

[Eóin]

Hi folks, I have two harddisks of which I suspect one may be giving some trouble. I don't need to get any data off them but would like to run some sort of very thorough check on each before I put them back into service.

There are lots of different tests on say the Ultimate Boot CD but has anyone here any advice from personal experiences to add?

Cheers, Eoin.

[ChalkTrauma]

I would start with HDTune, and then move on to the ultimate boot utils. See if the CD has a drive fitness test from the vendor who made your drive. I've found most of the drive utils on that distro to be pretty good.

[Carol Haynes]

If you don't mind wiping the disc check the manufacturers website - they almost all have thorough diagnostic tools for their drives. They usually have a variety o tests but the most thorough ones usually involve writing to the disc as well as reading.

You could also download some SMART monitoring software to check the SMART status of the drive (there are loads on Google to choose from). These read the constant status checks recorded on the drive and will tell you how close to failure the drive is.

Haven't tried this one but is free and looks fairly mature http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools

It is available for Windows and Linux.

The Windows download is at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297

[J-Mac]

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!

[Stoic Joker]

I'll 2nd the vote for Hitachi Drive Fitness test. It works great for all brands of EIDE, SATA, & SCSI drives. It's been my kit for a while and it is indeed non-destructive( and reportless).

[azza]

You might look at Steve Gibson's Spinrite, from grc.com, although its not free, so I'd go for one of the other programs mentioned.

[f0dder]

Spinrite?

Friends don't let friends use spinrite.

[PhilB66]

Friends don't let friends use spinrite.

Helllllllo f0dder!

[attach]

[J-Mac]

I never tried Spinrite.  Is there a story to go along with that, f0dder?

Jim

[MerleOne]

You may try a newly released freeware : http://www.ntfs.com/disk-monitor.htm
It offers SMART analysis and Surface Scan.

HDTune is also a tool you may try (also freeware).