burble

Does anyone know of some generic hard drive diagnostic software? I'm looking for a free and simple-to-use ISO that I can burn and give someone.

I've got a few CDs from years ago, like Seagate Seatools, IBM/Hitachi drive fitness test, Maxtor Powermax etc. That's the soft of thing I'm after, but they all say they are manufacturer-specific.

Knoppix etc would probably be too complicated - it won't be me using it.

Do you know anything like those that wouldn't care who manufactured the hard drive? Or should I just suck it up and write idiot-proof instructions for them to find me their drive manufacturer?

Thanks!

CrystalVPS

You could use something to look at the SMART data on the drive?

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fov

Spinrite has saved a few disks in the past.

burble

That sounds like the sort of thing I'm after. I'm basically looking for something to do a good scan of the drive and tell me if there are any errors. It's for a friend of a friend, one of those "hey, I know someone who can help you with your broken laptop" situations that I'm guessing most people here will known only too well.

I want to give them a CD they can stick in, run, come back to me and say "It says there are errors", and I can tell them to go get a new computer

andyb28

Mini PE is a bootable ISO and has quite a few hard disk tools ready to go.

I think it was Mini PE, if not, it was Bart's one.

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Jon-NC

Bart PE is pretty good. Will Maxtor Drive tools do enough for you?

Jon

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Sash!

HDD Life is good for reading the SMART data. I run it on my laptop to keep an eye on things.

www.hddlife.com

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BurtyB

To be honest I find SMART useless most of the time. I've only seen it pick up faults on a few failed drives. I find a microscope/quicktech disk test a lot more reliable than a SMART scan [but at a cost obviously].

ChrisB.

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Penguin

The latest Seatools should check any drive - it's not been manufacturer specific for a while. We normally use the manufacturers own software when testing drives, but int he few cases where none is provided by them Seatools works fine.

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JamesSykes

ultimate boot cd

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Row

thumbs up for Spinrite

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