Good Hard Drive Diagnostics bootable CD?

[Net]

What is a good bootable CD to check SATA hard drives?

 

[Gillbot]

Usually the OEM will have one available for download and burning.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: Blain
> SpinRite <

* SpinRite Review...
"The drives you save may be your own. Highly recommended."

* SpinRite Testimonials
* SpinRite Videos

I think Blain works for SpinRite or something, he's always shilling for them.



JK

Seriously, if you use their software please report back with results to inform us of whether it helps or not.

I'm a rabid listener of "Security Now". Steve Gibson is always reading email feedback about the astounding recoveries that SpinRite has pulled off.
Steve is also the one that gave us https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2">ShieldsUP</a> to test for open ports.


The last email testimonial for SpinRite from the show (linked here)...
"STEVE: And I have what is perhaps one of the oddest SpinRite stories in a hundred and...

LEO: Oh, come on. You've had some pretty odd ones.

STEVE: I've had some pretty odd ones. But this one may still - it's definitely up there.

LEO: Really.

STEVE: This is from Mike Roberts, whose subject looked rather benign. The subject was "SpinRite recovers from burned hard drive."

LEO: Okay.

STEVE: So he says, "Hello. I recently had one of my older computers fail to boot. When attempting to start up, the motherboard would only issue a series of beeps. I figured the first thing would be to replace each part piece by piece to determine which part was causing the problem. But replacing each piece failed to solve the problem. Next, I decided to move the jumper on my motherboard to clear the CMOS. Reasonable. As I was turning the machine back on, I accidentally dropped a screwdriver into it, and it began emitting sparks, and parts began to catch on fire. Within seconds my power was shorted, and the entire house lost power. Without even thinking, I grabbed a nearby can of Mountain Dew." He probably had been drinking too much of that. Don't know if anyone knows, that's seriously caffeine loaded. He says, "Without even thinking I grabbed a nearby can of Mountain Dew and splashed it on the burning computer."

LEO: Oh, my god.

STEVE: "I realize now that this was an electrical fire, and pouring this on earlier, before the power went out, would have been disastrous. After turning the power back on from the basement, I went to assess the damage. Needless to say, pretty much everything was destroyed beyond repair. Even if it wasn't all burned and/or melted..."

LEO: It was covered with sugar.

STEVE: "...it was now covered in Mountain Dew. The files on my hard drive were not critically important, but I wanted them. I took the hard drive, pulled the melted plastic off, and wiped the stickiness and black burn marks off. I connected the hard drive to a clip that I had pulled off an external hard drive and tried to connect it to my computers. Neither my Windows, Mac, or Linux machines could find the drive. So I decided to try one more thing. I connected the drive to a computer and started up SpinRite."

LEO: Oh, man.

STEVE: "To my utter disbelief, SpinRite found the drive, and I ran it at level 2 for data recovery. After SpinRite was finished, the drive was recognized by my computers, and I recovered every single file. Thank you. P.S.: I love the show. Keep it up."

LEO: P.P.S.: I'm going to stop drinking so much Mountain Dew.

STEVE: Oh, goodness.

LEO: And don't drop a screwdriver into your computer. It's a bad idea.

STEVE: Bad idea."