- Apr 26, 2003
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I do laptop and PC repair on the side and often need to be able to do a comprehensive hard drive test on a machine with a suspected failing hard drive. Or to test hardware that I have laying around so I know to keep, or throw out. I used to use The Troubleshooter, it had a full non destructive read and write test that tested each and every sector of a drive and reported if it found bad ones or not. Of course the test took hours, sometimes days depending on the drive's size, but it was worth it. The old Troubleshooter program no longer works on newer drives (i think its PATA only).
My question is, does anyone know of any testing suites, or just HDD tests that are generic (meaning they dont come from a specific brand and wont work if the drive isnt that brand), and can do a in depth, comprehensive test on any hard drive?
Typically the machines I work on for people are older, so the troubleshooter has been fine for me up until now. Now even some of the older ones i'm getting from people to work on, have SATA drives in them, and that method no longer works.
My question is, does anyone know of any testing suites, or just HDD tests that are generic (meaning they dont come from a specific brand and wont work if the drive isnt that brand), and can do a in depth, comprehensive test on any hard drive?
Typically the machines I work on for people are older, so the troubleshooter has been fine for me up until now. Now even some of the older ones i'm getting from people to work on, have SATA drives in them, and that method no longer works.