Toshiba Laptop Hard Drive Diagnostic Utility - Where?

[RaiderJ]

Trying to fix a friend's computer, but his hard drive has a bunch of errors. I can't for the life of me find a Toshiba hard drive diagnostic program - something to mark the bad sectors so they aren't used when re-installing Windows. Any idea where to find a program like this?

 

[Jeff7]

I'm not sure, but maybe the Recovery Mode....Recovery console, whatever it's called - you boot to it with the Windows CD. Maybe you can do chkdsk /r from there to check the hard drive surface. Is the hard drive under warranty? Bad sectors aren't a good thing to have - the drive should be replaced.

I also just read at another forum, thanks to Google, that the Ultimate Boot CD has Powermax on it, which might not check for the brand of hard drive. Maybe Knoppix would have something similar, though I know nothing of Linux's abilities as far as drive scanning is concerned.

 

[bacillus]

Have you considered suggesting to your friend that getting a new hard drive now may save a lot of pain later?

 

[RaiderJ]

Yes, but at the moment that's not much of an option.

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I can't for the life of me find a Toshiba hard drive diagnostic program - something to mark the bad sectors so they aren't used when re-installing Windows. Any idea where to find a program like this?

I am also unable to find a Toshiba hard drive diagnostic program . However the requested application to mark bad sectors so they are not used when re-installing Windows is provided in the partition format utility when a thorough (long) format is selected.