Hard disk diagnostic (bootable ISO's)

[MacGyver]

I had a bit of a scare this week. My computer had been acting up for a while, but I never suspected hard disk problems. One day, the computer wouldn't boot at all with the Seagate hard disk connected, even as a slave to another hard drive. So I couldn't even FDISK it.

Fortunately, Seagate offers a free diagnostic tool on their website, SeaTools, that you burn to make a bootable CD. This tool found a bad sector through the c:\log.txt file, which it was able to fix and instantly the drive worked again! If I did not have this software, the drive most likely would have ended up in the trash can.

All of the hard disk manufacturers make similar tools. It's a great idea to get the ones you need for the hard disks you have, or if you're working on others' computers, get them all and put them in your toolkit.

ISO's:
Western Digital Data Lifeguard (http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=30)
Seagate SeaTools (http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/)
Maxtor PowerMax (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=113)

[TechZ]

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

UBCD is a very handy tool, that has all the diag tools from the manufacturers and more :)

[MacGyver]

I have that, too. But I was not aware that those hard drive diag tools were on it (one of the problems with UBCD is the sheer amount of stuff on it!) Thanks!

[shamus]

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


One of my favs!

[confus-ed]

This is worth linking to this tip :) :-Maxtor SATA Diagnostics needed (http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=72245) where I observed that many of existing manufacturers utils are unable to deal with drives when attached to either raid, or sata controllers, luckily someone knew one that doesn't have that restriction on it, & is supposed to work with any controller or disk;
..the URL is: Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm)

(which is also on the ultimate boot cd Techz links to :thumbs: )