What software to TEST a hard drive? Scandisk OK?

[capeconsultant]

I need to test 2 hard drives which I think are good but need to make sure. I have SpinRite, but if scandisk is just as good, I would use that. Any thoughts? Thanks, Dave

 

[Rubycon]

If you have Spinrite by all means use that.

CHKDSK is good to check the file system. If a drive has trouble running CHKDSK, shows bad clusters or starts making noises then you definitely need to run Spinrite.

 

[capeconsultant]

Thanks. Will do. It has been so long I forgot. I guess I am just lucky with hard drives, but these are for a client, so I want to check them out. I have a fairly recent version of SpinRite, but am checking his web site now to see what may have come out lately. Dave

 

[Elixer]

Hmm, I am not quite sure why you think Spinrite will help determine if the HD is still OK or not, unless you think it has bad blocks? I have had a HD fail after 1 week, after running that program on it, and it passed all the tests.

About all it can do is tell you the HD is ok during the test process, anything after that, and it still can fail at any time.

My rule of thumb is, if you think the drive is bad, then get a new one, and use that one for unimportant info that you can wipe at any time.