Hard Drive Diagnostic Tools -- Need a Good One

[effowe]

I've been tasked with fixing my friend's laptop, and I believe the hard drive is the problem. Every OS I have tried installing (Win 7, Vista, Ubuntu 9.04) has failed with the computer rebooting before the install process starts. I used Dban to clean the drive before all of the installs. I have also used Hiren's Boot CD, there was a Toshiba HD util on there which came up as FAIL immediately after running the program. There was no scan or anything. Note: I also let MemTest86 get through about 9 passes with no errors.

I was wondering if there is a program that comes on a bootable CD (or something that I can make bootable) to do a full detailed scan on the drive, and give me information about bad sectors etc.. This laptop is still under warranty, but since the Windows install appeared to be corrupted, they said that it was his problem, not theirs.

Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983.

 

[micechow]

maybe you can try SpinRite and Hard Drive Mechanic

i think the first one is better.

 

[veri745]

SpinRite is amazing. It takes a long ass time if you want to do a full disk recovery (I think it's level 4), but I've seen it repair drives that I thought were way beyond saving -- at least enough to get the important data off of them.

Well worth the money to buy it. It was written by one guy in assembly, so I think he deserves the business if it helps you out.

 

[Ken90630]

Another option would be to get one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-ASW-U.../dp/B002EUCU3O

It will enable you to hook up the laptop's HD to a PC so you could then run CheckDisk on it (it will look like an external hard drive to your PC). I bought one awhile back and have used it twice. Works great.

Note that it's for SATA drives -- if the drive in your friend's laptop is an ATA/EIDE drive, you'd obviously need a different adapter.

Also, Seagate claims their Sea Tools diagnostics will work on any hard drive, so that would be another option if you used the adapter above. Good luck.

 

[RebateMonger]

Every hard disk maker has a downloadable utility for diagnosing hard drives. Nowadays, most work with any make drive.

If the drive has physical errors (bad sectors, etc.) then throw it away and get a new one. Otherwise you will be wasting time with a drive that will almost certainly deveop new errors as time goes on.

 

[Elixer]

SpinRite is amazing. It takes a long ass time if you want to do a full disk recovery (I think it's level 4), but I've seen it repair drives that I thought were way beyond saving -- at least enough to get the important data off of them.

Well worth the money to buy it. It was written by one guy in assembly, so I think he deserves the business if it helps you out.

The problem with SpinRite is that it works on the drive itself, instead of copying all the data to a new drive, and work there.
That means, if the drive has a mechanical issue, then using spinrite can actually make the problem worse, or even kill the HD outright. It just depends what the issue is with the HD.

Best bet is to mirror the data onto another HD, and try to repair from that.

 

[RU482]

Every hard disk maker has a downloadable utility for diagnosing hard drives. Nowadays, most work with any make drive.

If the drive has physical errors (bad sectors, etc.) then throw it away and get a new one. Otherwise you will be wasting time with a drive that will almost certainly deveop new errors as time goes on.

HA! not toshiba!

 

[JimKiler]

How about Ultimate Boot CD

 

[Russwinters]

The problem with SpinRite is that it works on the drive itself, instead of copying all the data to a new drive, and work there.
That means, if the drive has a mechanical issue, then using spinrite can actually make the problem worse, or even kill the HD outright. It just depends what the issue is with the HD.

Best bet is to mirror the data onto another HD, and try to repair from that.




THIS.

Don't use spinrite on the suspected failing drive. EVER.

You can use it on a copy you have made from the drive, but never the actual failing drive.

to make a copy you can try linux DD Rescue. It at least as the ability to skip a bad sector instead of retrying 99 times.