Intermittent problems, suspect hard drive. Any tools to help?

[Sunday Ironfoot]

I'm having intermittent problems with my laptop, random lockups, not shutting down, not opening programs etc. I've not had a BSOD though. I had this before so I reinstalled Vista and the problems went away. Now they're back.

I managed to do a detailed drive scan before and it detected bad sectors. Now when I do one the drive scan process locks up at step 5, scanning free space. Strange thing is it locks up at 'exactly' the same place (same sector) and just sits there for half an hour before I have to power it off (tried it 3 times already).

So I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for tools that can perform detailed drive scanning/diagnostics (other than the built in Windows one which isn't working), just so I can confirm it IS the drive causing problems, and get a replacement.

The drive is a Hitachi 200GB Travelstar 7200RPM.

 

[simonjester]

GRC's SpinRite is a good tool for recovering disks with bad sectors. It will give you very detailed information if you ask it to, or you could just monitor it as it scans. You have to pay for it tho. . .

 

[Old Hippie]

How 'bout the Hitachi drive tools?

That drive is dying. Get your data now or forever hold your peace.

Good Luck!

 

[mikeyes]

If your hard drive has SMART capabilities you can read the SMART data from the HD and that will give you an indication if it is failing. Speedfan is a generic utility that can read and display SMART data for a HD

 

[RebateMonger]

Backup anything you don't already have and replace the drive. Don't try to "fix" the drive, as it's quite possible that the damage will get worse.

While S.M.A.R.T is nice in theory, it's VERY conservative. I see lots of failing hard drives that pass SMART.