Good way to really test out a hard drive?

[slackerinabox]

My computer's been pretty choppy lately.. I tested the memory using memtest so I know it's ok... Is there an equivalent to memtest for hard drives? I've scan disked and defragged all my drives but I still get this funky problem - sometimes, even when I'm idle, my CPU usage in Task Manager shoots up to 98%.. Funky cause I have a decent processor (2.4b P4) and enough ram (512mb).. I think it 's the hd.. I'm not sure though..
Thanks for any help!

 

[GermyBoy]

Downlaod the hd format utility for your harddrive (Maxtor, Seagate, WD, etc.) and run the burn-in test on it.

Prolly is a bad power supply from the sounds of it (the processor shoots up because your harddrive spins down and then is reinitialized by your os before you know what happened).