Good Utility for testing HDD's ?

[Kniteman77]

I just got a bunch of hard drives used and I'm looking to test for dead sectors, read errors and any other type of error that hard drives can produce.

What is a good Windows based and/or self booting tool that i could use to do this ?

Hopefully someone out there has done this before, or at least knows more than me

Thanks in advance

AIM me would be quickest

Kniteman77

or

Tim at netREMOVEaffect dot com

 

[23skidoo]

Each of the disk manufacturer's have a downloadable drive utility/testing program available on their support sites that will create a bootable flopppy for drive diagnostics and other useful tools like acoustic management, low-level format, and quick and long testing to recertify the drive. IBM/Hitachi has the Drive Fitness Test, Maxtor has Powermax, Seagate has SeaTools, WD has the DLGDIAG, Samsung, Fujitsu both have theirs too. I've got floppys for every major drive maker and always have two or three DRDOS clean boot floppys around for the ones that aren't bootable, though most of them are. Invaluable tools to have if you're dealing with a variety of drives or like me constantly shuffling boards, drives and other components in and out of my SETI farm and my shade tree sales barn. I never install an os on any drive without first running the drive utility to test it and do a complete low-level format unless it's brand-new from the factory.

 

[nanaki333]

you could always download burn-in test. that'll test practically every component, including your hdd.

 

[redbeard1]

Hiren's boot cd version 5 has almost all of the hard drive manufacturers test utilities on it. It takes some work to find it on the web.