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
Seagate SeaTools
Maxtor PowerMax