How to tell a healthy computer...

[DWW]

Buying a second hand PII 450 Dell (at an extremely -low- cost
Store offers 30 day limited warranty so I just want to hear what you guys think I should run on it for that 30 days to try it out and make sure its up to par.

I figure prime95 running 48 hours to test for CPU (and RAM to a certain extent) and then memtest86 for about 24 hours

What is a good, free tool that scans the disk to make sure its not faulty? That is my number one fear... cheap hard disk that will die and/or already has bad sectors :\ Is there any way they "hide" this or should it be detectable with the right tools?

 

[TROGDORdBURNINATOR]

What is a good, free tool that scans the disk to make sure its not faulty?

You've already got the first two test chosen correctly. You can use scandisk in windows XP (disc properties->tools) and do a surface scan. It'll let you know.

 

[bluemax]

I had this very issue... a bad trader sent me drives full of bad sectors. :|
It would format, and format would say everything's fine, but scandisk found lotza problems.

Might as well start with Scandisk since you already have it. To do a surface scan will take a good long time... I'd set it to auto-correcting without confirmation and let it go all night.