Best Free Program to diagnose hard drive problems

[kypron7]

Can anyone point me in the right direction for a program that will tell me for sure whether a hard drive has bad sectors? It is a Western Digital SATA I 7200 RPM 250 GB Drive, with windows XP.

 

[alzan]

Look on Western Digitals site for downloadle utilities for testing your hard drive. You can also run Chkdsk on a reboot of Windows (doubleclick My Computer, rightclick the "C" drive, choose Properties on the menu, choose the second tab labelled "Tools", the top heading is "Error Checking, click the Check Now button and checkmark both boxes then click Start.

Windows will tell you you need to restart your PC for the test to occur. Close your open windows and click the Start Menu program and restart Windows. Chkdsk will run during bootup and will report any bad sectors and will also attempt to remap bad sectors so that no files will be written to them.

alzan

 

[kypron7]

Ok thanks. I will do the chkdsk, but I'm not sure what to get from WD's site, Data Lifeguard tools doesn't seem to come with a diagnostic...

Is it advisable to run chkdsk and continue to use the drive? I mean, windows has reported bad sectors, is it worth it to try and keep using the drive or are more sectors likely to go bad?

 

[JackMDS]

Get the Ultimate CD (it is free) there are few HD applications included,
http://www.snapfiles.com/revie...t_CD/ultimateboot.html

Otherwise this is Good (not free, but not expensive), http://www.drivehealth.com/

 

[kypron7]

Thanks Jack, I will try the free one! Looks very useful.