Is there a format util for *all* ATA/SATA drives?

[kpataska]

I'm looking for a free utility that will essentially do a COMPSURF (showing my age) for modern drives - to certify that the media is in good condition.

I want *1* utility. I know some manufacturers have their own, but I want ONE!!!

Please advise.

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s

[Matridom]

Other then the windows/os provided tools, the only thing i can think of is SpineRite (www.grc.com) It's not free however

[confus-ed]

Err you want to use the manufacturers diagnostic to test physical stuff, as they need to be able to properly interact with its firmware, stuff like spinrite is just booting from an alternate source & then using disk editing tools to manipulate any data

[geoscomp]

Err you want to use the manufacturers diagnostic to test physical stuff, as they need to be able to properly interact with its firmware, stuff like spinrite is just booting from an alternate source & then using disk editing tools to manipulate any data

Spinrite does much more than that..it will activate the drives SMART subsystem and continuously monitor both the standard SMART parameters and the SMART event counters. If that isnt interacting with the drives firmware, I don't know what is. I use it to test any suspect drive and find such things as drive overheating, etc.

[confus-ed]

Spinrite does much more than that..it will activate the drives SMART subsystem .. If that isnt interacting with the drives firmware, I don't know what is..

You can get linux or even windows to interact with SMART, its just a table of disk stats, its one of a few bios is capable of maintaining, like the escd pool. I didn't say spinrite couldn't be used to test disks, I said the manufacturers utility should be better, as that will be able to report & analyse actual values maintained in any performance tables & not just the 'pass/fail' values passed by the SMART interface, any manufacturers utility will also be able to directly call functions from the drives firmware & not rely on 'standard' disk calls via bios which spinrite depends on.. & (probably more importantly on a practical level) if you want to send a disk back, you quite often get asked for the failure code from the maufacturers test s/w.

[geoscomp]

I didn't say spinrite couldn't be used to test disks, I said the manufacturers utility should be better, as that will be able to report & analyse actual values maintained in any performance tables & not just the 'pass/fail' values passed by the SMART interface

stuff like spinrite is just booting from an alternate source & then using disk editing tools to manipulate any data

?????

[confus-ed]

?????

The tables 'smart' uses are simplistic & the 'smart' interface can only generally produce pass fail values to pass to bios, if you have a manufacturers utility which can access the actual firmware instructions that creates these counters, even if you don't have a motherboard bios capable of taking advantage of 'smart prediction' (plus which there's a few versions, some of which report more than others) you can, as such a utility would be able to create the various bits of info necessary by directly accessing firmware calls & not relying on bios to do it (which mightn't be doing it correctly anyways, 'false positive' not being unknown with 'smart prediction' especially when you have 'immature' motherboard bioses).

& like I said if you actually want to rma a faulty disk you'll need to include the manufacturers report of any error & not what some 3rd party utility is saying based on some 3rd party bios based on the manufacturers firmware which they all will tell you is better & more accurately read by their own tools designed for just such a job ..

[geoscomp]

that wasnt the reason for the question mark..I guess I was confuse-ed by your statement that spin rite just acts on data when in your next statement you denied saying that it couldnt be used to test disks. If it only acted on data, it couldnt be used to test disks..only data errors.

[confus-ed]

that wasnt the reason for the question mark..I guess I was confuse-ed by your statement that spin rite just acts on data ...

You should know I get confus-ed by now .. I'm trying to say that spinrite (or similar) can only read what BIOS might present to it wheras any manufacturers util ought to be able to directly access the disks firmware.

[JeffO93]

I'd have to agree with confus-ed.
There are many utilities or boot CDs that could do the job, but the BEST way is to use the manufacturer's utility/method.
IF there is a problem, there might be a manufacturer-specific code output. Giving this code output to the manufacturer when a drive checks bad greases the skids to get a new, free drive without any arguement. Since the manufacturer knows the exact specifics of each drive they make, thier utilities also run faster. And nothing will be more thorough.