Hard drive diagnostic utility?

[NoodleTech]

My friend's computer's OS installation just went corrupt and I need an app to check to make sure that his hard drive isn't failing. Are there any good freeware hard drive diagnostic utilities that I can burn to a CD and boot off of to scan the hard drive for bad sectors?

 

[soonerproud]

Go to the manufactures web site and download the free utilities they provide. All the major hard drive companies have free utilities for this purpose.

 

[Rebooted]

If it's a name brand computer, you can usually go into the BIOS and do some sort of hard drive health check.