Determining if a hard drive has bad sectors/is damaged (PLZ READ)

[DWW]

Recently got an old 2.4 GB drive. Since its like 6 or 7 years old I'd like to see if it has damage (bad sectors and the likes).

Its in an old machine that can't run 2K otherwise I'd put that on and scandisk. Are there any decent tools that can tell me this from DOS? Does the format.com tool show when there are bad sectors? I know there is a DOS scandisk I can use too. Could the previous owner repartitioned it around them? I'm gunna clear any partition, then try a low a regular FAT32 format. Or should I do a "low level" format instead? etc etc etc.

Any help is really appreciated. I'm a software guy not hardware :\

 

[Jeff7]

Use Fdisk to remove any partitions, then recreate one. Use format like this: format x: /c - that will check for bad clusters. (Use a boot image from Bootdisk.com, as the /c switch in the WinXP (maybe 2k too) enables compression - wrong function for this purpose.) So do that, and once you have the drive formatted, use the DOS scandisk on it, and do a surface scan.

 

[dunkster]

Who makes the drive?

Most drive makers (certainly WD and Maxtor) offer utility programs that will thoroughly diagnose the drive and perhaps revive the drive (map out bad sectors, low level format, etc.).

Hope this helps!