I need some recommendations on HDD testing utilities - I don't mean performance benchmarking, but thorough testing for bad blocks, slow areas, etc. - something like MHDD, but something that can be used on systems below Pentium. Is Norton Disk Doctor a reliable enough option, or is there any better stuff out there?
I usually use HDAT2. Never tested on something lower than a Pentium, however.
What make is the hard drive? Most manufacturers have their own DOS-mode utilities to test such things (Seagate SeaTools, WD Data Lifeguard, Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, etc). I guess I've never tried them on REALLY old drives, but they're worth a shot.
How about Spinrite by Gibson Reasearch ?
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
It also can do data recovery too.
I also agree with using the HDD manufacturers diagnostic tools like Seatools from Seagate and DatLifeguard from WD 😀
No matter where you go, there you are...
+1 for spinrite, also get the Hiren's Boot CD, there is a lot of HD tools on it. (The LEGAL one).
Ultimate Boot CD. Comes with plenty of HDD test tools including the ones from Seagate, WD...
But yes, WD, Seagate, Samsung all have utilities for download that test your HDD for errors.
wrote:Ultimate Boot CD. Comes with plenty of HDD test tools including the ones from Seagate, WD..
I second that. Lots of useful tools and utilities in that cd. A must-have for DIY sessions.
I guess using "* Boot CD" means booting from CD, right? Since I haven't seen a 486 (or lower) that can do that, I might as well use MHDD 😀. I'll test them on my dual-slot1 platform then... as for the manufacturer-supplied tools, I'm a bit reluctant because you don't get to see much details about what's going on during testing - all you get is a "Pass" or "Fail" at the end, but not much about how each sector "behaves". I'll also be curious if/how these tools perform on pretty old drives (I currently have 5 drives to test, ranging from 1GB to 8GB, 4 of them WD and 1 Seagate)...
Well we kinda assumed that one would remove that hard drive and test it in a more capable system 😀
Before CDs, these tools were available as floppy versions. But I don't think you can get these anymore.
Seagate and Western Digital both still have floppy versions of their utilities.
On another note for using the CD booting in 486 : You can use Smart Boot Manager or Plop Boot Manager to redirect booting sequence to a CD drive. I'm using Smart Boot Manager in my 486.
Booting to Ultimate Boot CD opens up the ability to use tons of utilities, especially when it comes to HDD Diagnosing, Partitioning and Advanced HDD editing.
If going through Boot Managers seems like a hassle, you can boot it in yout modern machine, load up the particular utility or tool you're interested, and exit to dos from within the loaded software screen. It will drop to the command prompt with the loaded directory. You can then copy these files to a floppy disk and use them in your 486,386,286,XT,etc.
And of course, all the tools available in the UBCD are available separately on the net.
And I don't think Norton Disk Doctor is enough for the jobs you mentioned.
Seagate, WD, and Maxtor - the probability of seeing your hard drive falling into one of these groups is very high, and as others mentioned, all these three have dos level testing and repair utilities from their respective companies (which are all, again, available in the UBCD - including those for Samsung drives.)
