Utilities to check the health of your hard drive?

[chuckywang]

Recently, a Maxtor hard drive connected to my IDE controller in my computer is been touchy. I've am able to read off the hard drive with no problem. I just can't copy files TO the hard drive. My computer freezes up every time. Is there any utilities that check my hard drive for errors of any sort without destroying the data (I have over 80 gigs on this hard drive that I want to keep).

I tried the Windows error checking utility but that freezes up my computer as well. I need something more robust.

 

[StevenYoo]

Spinrite?

 

[Zugzwang152]

get the maxtor drive test and do a full scan.

 

[QueBert]

it's not cheap, but not really expensive for what it does. Spinrite is THE BEST program of it's kind. I have been using it since the DOS days, nothing even comes close. it has saved many HD's for me. It can do bit by bit scanning and data recovery so unless your drive is totally FUBAR, you can manage to save a lot of the data oon it that otherwise would be toast.

It can be slow, running it on a WD drive that's on the verge of death *trying to pull the last bit of data off it* been sitting at 7.336% for about 2 hours. but it's recovered about 1 meg of data off trashed sectors.

NOTHING on the market will scan as accuratly as Spinrite, I bought it. and I run it on both my drives about once a month, with no errors it's pretty fast *1 hour 30 minutes for 200 gigs" if you have bad sectors and want to try to recover the data, I've had it run for 3 weeks to save 100 megs, but it did the job

 

[StevenYoo]

Originally posted by: QueBert
it's not cheap, but not really expensive for what it does. Spinrite is THE BEST program of it's kind. I have been using it since the DOS days, nothing even comes close. it has saved many HD's for me. It can do bit by bit scanning and data recovery so unless your drive is totally FUBAR, you can manage to save a lot of the data oon it that otherwise would be toast.

It can be slow, running it on a WD drive that's on the verge of death *trying to pull the last bit of data off it* been sitting at 7.336% for about 2 hours. but it's recovered about 1 meg of data off trashed sectors.

NOTHING on the market will scan as accuratly as Spinrite, I bought it. and I run it on both my drives about once a month, with no errors it's pretty fast *1 hour 30 minutes for 200 gigs" if you have bad sectors and want to try to recover the data, I've had it run for 3 weeks to save 100 megs, but it did the job

haha, sounds like a testimonial that would be posted on their website

 

[QueBert]

yeah it does, I'm a Spinrite groupie. I think Spinrite and X-Tree are the only 2 programs I've ever raved about in 25 years of using a computer. Well, unless you count that Star Trek game my dad had on his TRS-80 with the ascii graphics, but I was 4-5 and the concept blew me away

 

[Chompman]

I like to open up the hard drive, blow the dust and such out and then run it while the top is off for a bit to make sure it is working fine...

 

[apinomus]

Thanks for the recommendations QueBerg

 

[0roo0roo]

maxtor.com use their utilities

 

[chuckywang]

Thanks guys for the suggestions.

 

[chuckywang]

I have ACTIVE Smart running. Will that fix hard drive problems, or will it just monitor the hard drive?

 

[QueBert]

it will just monitor

 

[DaFinn]

Originally posted by: Chompman
I like to open up the hard drive, blow the dust and such out and then run it while the top is off for a bit to make sure it is working fine...

Yeah, I also write directly to the drives with a marker. Don't trust the fancy electronics doing that... they allways screw things up. You'd be suprised how little info fits on a 400Gb drive when you write to the discs directly :Q

 

[Chompman]

Originally posted by: DaFinn

Originally posted by: Chompman
I like to open up the hard drive, blow the dust and such out and then run it while the top is off for a bit to make sure it is working fine...

Yeah, I also write directly to the drives with a marker. Don't trust the fancy electronics doing that... they allways screw things up. You'd be suprised how little info fits on a 400Gb drive when you write to the discs directly :Q

Make sure you use a good pen, the cheap ones will run all over when it starts spinning fast.