Freeware Hard drive Surface Testing for Windows XP/2000?

[Glenn9999]

Does anyone know of a good non-destructive surface tester for Windows NT/XP/2000 that will work with an NTFS partition? Freeware preferably. A program that's the same idea as a Scandisk or Norton Disk Doctor.

I found recently to my horror that this function is completely non-existent with the Windows XP CHKDSK and am in need of something that will work.

 

[wolluf]

what's wrong with chkdsk /r? (certainly better than anything scandisk can do!)

what exactly are you trying to do - presumably you have a problem of some kind?

 

[Glenn9999]

chkdsk doesn't do surface testing. That's what's wrong with it.

And what am I trying to do. I had a hard drive that passed multiple trips through chkdsk but had bad sectors.

I finally discovered the problem when I decided to redo the computer, and did a wipe of the drive. The wipe program kept returning messages like "Unable to write to sector 66702. Abort/Retry?"

Evidently shows me that chkdsk is lacking in that way compared to what scandisk was.

 

[SkipCox]

Download and use the utilities provided by the hard drive manufacturer.

Skip

http://skipcox.net

 

[Glenn9999]

Download and use the utilities provided by the hard drive manufacturer

Which only provides for destructive hard drive surface testing, beyond the other tests, which passed as well on this drive for months.

 

[SkipCox]

What brand and model of drive Glenn? Maxtor?

Mebbe we can find something to help with a little more informatin.

Skip

http://skipcox.net

 

[Glenn9999]

Sure (though I thought this was a simple enough request). The old drive was a Western Digital WD800JB.

The WD Diagnostic offers: 1) Quick Test. 2) Extended Test. 3) Write Zeros to Drive.

Like I specified, I had intermittent crashes/errors which seemed to indicate the hard drive and corrupt files. So I'd set it to run chkdsk. No problems, it'd run it's course and the OS would boot up. Until the next lockup or crash.

Of course, I'd load this WD Diagnostic. Test #1, and Test #2 would both pass, as well. Odd to me now that I think back. But OK, this thing says it will pass.

More crashes, now taking some of my data along with them. OK, problems. WD Diagnostic checks out, chkdsk now says there are "unrecoverable errors". Okay, if WD Diagnostic checks out, then I guess I need to reload the OS since the NTFS partition must be corrupt (i.e. something NDD would have fixed in the DOS days).

Got my files off the drive successfully (4.5GB worth), no problems, reboot to DOS. Well I figure if the partition data is corrupt, I might do well to wipe the drive. I load up a separate program, get the errors I described above. Then, I stop it load WD Diagnostic again, now test #1 errors out. Fine diagnostic programs they are.

To translate this, using option #3 in WD Diagnostic would have likely forced the error as well.

So it seems the only good way to surface test hard drives these days is to do a destructive wipe and see what happens. But I'm trying to avoid that, remembering that scandisk and norton disk doctor did just fine with FAT16 and FAT32 partitions.

And that's what I'm asking about. A program that will do genuine not destructive disk surface testing on NTFS partitions.

 

[JimInKS]

I know you are looking for freeware, but I have had pretty good luck with Spinrite from

http://www.grc.com

(but it is $89).

It has been probably about a year ago that I was also looking for some freeware, but couldn't find anything, and so just ponyed up the $89 for Spinrite and have been happy with my purchase.

 

[wolluf]

Glenn - read back you posts. Your drive has been failing for a while - just taken it a while to appear over the diagnostic/chkdsk event horizon. You've fortunately retrieved your data - the drive is toast (would you trust it in future even if you managed to get it working again - I know I wouldn't).

 

[Glenn9999]

It's my old drive now, not my current one. You're talking to a guy that throws out floppy disks as soon as bad sector show up on them Zero tolerance