Hard disk diagnostic tools

[plastick]

Hey fellow techies.
Im trying to fix my hard drive. It may be hopeless for my 3 y/o 60gig, but darnit, I dont want to buy a new one.

Anyone know where I can get good hard disk diagnostic tools? I really dont know where to start to look for them, becasue i've never had to do this before. I figure I get a prog. and put it on disk, boot from that disk and funk around with my hard drive till its fixed.

I have an IBM Deskstar Model IC35L060AVER07-0 (If that helps)

I tried to thwart the confusion of IMB's website, but alas, I got nowhere.

Please help this desperate poster.

 

[cmaMath13]

go to hitachi's website (they own IBM hhd drives). You can download the Hard Drive Fitness program for free and try it on your drive.

 

[sniperruff]

IMO they are pretty useless

i used the one from WD and it couldn't detect that it has bad sectors!

 

[OverVolt]

Yea hitachi's website is a good suggestion, and the WD utility has been good to me, ive never had a drive go bad, it never reported any errors on any or my 6WD HD's and it's great for writing 0's

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: OverVolt
Yea hitachi's website is a good suggestion, and the WD utility has been good to me, ive never had a drive go bad, it never reported any errors on any or my 6WD HD's and it's great for writing 0's

writing zero's = format HD correct?

forgot to look there. i'm going to RMA my WD1200JB with bad sectors. was wondering how i should earse my HD. was just gonna put in windows disc and format the drive...

 

[CZroe]

Older versions of WD and IBM's utilities could not only detect bad sectors, but 100% repair them (Remap to good spare sectors). About a year and a half ago (Maybe more? Less?) they removed this functionality from IBMDFT and WDDIAG and made it a high-level sofware only tool (No better than scandisk which would crash or freeze when it encountered an error). Look for the older versions. Even with the older versions, the major problem IBM 60GXPs and 75GXPs had could not be fixed by DFT. An IBM employee seemed like he didn't believe me when I told him it crashed DFT and dumped me back to an A: prompt (While DFT was still on the screen) so you may have better luck...