Hard Driver tester

[ojas25]

Does anyone know of a good free hard driver tester that will scan for hard drive faults?  Ojas

[Geek-9pm]

Most big makers  of Hard rives offer stand alone diagnostics that can boot from a floppy.
One such utility is Sea tools from Seagate. But I need to tell you, it can do more harm that good.

My recommendation, and others who work in the industry,  is go get a new replacement hard drive if you have any reason to think the drive is not reliable. The  time it takes to recondition a failing drive is not worth it.  Even if you are  an expert. The price of a new drive is now at the level of a preconditioned drive of the same size and type.

[jason2074]

Depending on the condition of your Hard drive for testing such as maintaining or checking the status , Microsoft OS system has a basic diagnostic or system tool like Error checking or a defragmentation program or using defraggler. Another useful way to check the integrity of your hard drive is using chkdsk (/f/p/r) for any file system error or bad sectors. A failing hard drive would mean using the manufacturing diagnostic tool.
 http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

[Computer_Commando]

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287