Hard drive testing guide

[Lincoln]

Thrax has written a guide on hard drive diagnostics (http://icrontic.com/articles/hard_drive_diagnostics):
A dying hard drive can exhibit the same symptoms as bad memory or spyware, which is why it’s important to have the right tools to diagnose it. Within an hour of using such a tool, you’ll know whether or not it’s time to back up your data.

[Michael George]

Hi, I downloaded the file and extract it and burnt it to CD. However, I didn't get the same display as the one you posted. It showed me A:// in RS DOS.
My laptop is Toshiba 2410. Does this software work with any type of drive ?? Thank you.

[Thrax]

It's supposed to work with any type of drive, but some motherboards throw DFT through a loop. As an alternative, you can try running Seagate's SeaTools for DOS utility that also burns to and boots from a CD. Perform a full/extended scan from the program's menu.

[Rochelle Lopyan]

DFT doesn't see my Hitachi SATA hard drives (2 drives in RAID1), in Toshiba Qosmio laptop. BIOS reports correct hard drives (200GB) but reports capacity incorrectly as 60GB (due to a hidden Toshiba partition that reports the size of the original hard drives, even though an Acronis backup was restored to the larger 200GB drive).

Is it the controller the Toshiba laptop uses that is making the hard drives invisible to hard drive diagnostics? Do I need to remove the hard drives from the laptop and connect them to another computer via SATA->USB adapter in order to test them?

[Thrax]

It is very possible that the drive controller is causing the issue. :) You're absolutely right. Before trying a USB adapter, give Seagate's Seatools for DOS (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools) application a try. It performs the same function as DFT, but it can be friendlier to RAID and newer controllers.