up vote 1 down vote favorite
1
share [g+] share [fb]

Is there a true and reliable application that can detect if my harddisk health is good or not? I installed fresh windows 7 today and it seems that the computer is not respoding sometimes or kinda slow (and this is without )

link|improve this question
2  
Hi Amir: Without what?? I'm in suspense! :) Anyhow, you may want to reword your question. Right now, the answer is "Yes, there are tools to help you determine if your drive is healthy.", which is primarily the job of the OS (Windows), your drivers (RAID, AHCI, etc.), and the drive itself (SMART). What makes you think it's bad sectors slowing the computer down? What have you tried so far? – techie007 Aug 24 '11 at 11:58
feedback

5 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

For more thorough testing, download testing tool from the hard drive manufacturer. Their say is as final on HDD health as test tools go.

.

If manufacturer of your HDD is:

Hitachi - check this link. There are two diagnostic programs: Drive Fitness Test and OGT Diagnostic Tool.

Drive Fitness Test is for all SCSI, IDE and SATA drives except for Ultrastar 10K300, Ultrastar 15K73 and DK32xx disk drives which should be tested with OGT Diagnostic Tool. Advanced Test is recommended when you are using Drive Fitness Test.

Descriptions of Error Codes you will find in the documents to which links are given below (use Foxit software (free software) to read the PDF's):

Drive Fitness Test User's Guide - on page 28 OGT Diagnostic Tool User's Guide - on page 13

Seagate - test your HDD with SeaTools. Long Test is recommended.

Descriptions of Error Codes you will find in the document to which link is given below:

SeaTools Error Codes

Toshiba / Fujitsu - check this link and use software from Diagnostic Tools section. Comprehensive Test is recommended.

Western Digital - test your HDD with Data Lifeguard Diagnostic. Extended Test is recommended. Descriptions of Error Codes you will find in the document to which link is given below:

Diagnostic Error Codes

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 2 down vote

One of the best, that I already use to test my external hard drive is SeaTool, from Seagate:

"SeaTools is a comprehensive, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that helps you quickly determine the condition of the disk drive in your external hard drive, desktop or laptop computer. It includes several tests that will examine the physical media on your Seagate or Maxtor disk drive and any other non-Seagate disk drive."

PS: It is developed by Seagate but actually can test any HDD models or manufacturers that not only from Seagate.

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 2 down vote

Included Microsoft's Chkdsk (checkdisk) works acceptably well.

link|improve this answer
ScanDisk? This isn't Windows ME. :) – techie007 Aug 24 '11 at 11:50
Meh... Chkdsk or whatever you want to call it... Windows users... :P – m0skit0 Aug 24 '11 at 12:10
Use the /R flag to check the drive surface for bad sectors. – Breakthrough Aug 24 '11 at 16:15
feedback
up vote 2 down vote

I've used Spinrite to not only detect for bad sectors, but also to recover data on sectors that was previously unreadable. Spinrite will also show the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive when it runs.

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 1 down vote

In general, a good deal of disk health checks involve reading SMART information - smartmontools does this, and gsmartcontrol is a front end to that. If you want to check your drive health, this is probably what you should try.

However, from my experience, hard drive failure is usually less 'slowness' and more accumulating wiredness like odd errors and file transfer failures.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.