recommended tool to check external HD for errors?

maxwelltfmaxwelltf
edited October 2008 in Hardware
I have an external hard disk, that I use for backup purposes for my Win XP Pro SP2 laptop, connected via an IEEE 1394 connection. It's a 50GB PATA IDE/100 drive in an enclosure. The last two times I have used it, it seems to have "disconnected" itself from Windows (makes that hardware disconnect bong-bong noise) and is no longer listed in My Computer. Of course, whatever files I was copying at the time are hung up and it causes my laptop to freeze for a long time (like 15minutes). My laptop eventually comes around again, and I get a bunch of red X warnings with cryptic messages saying data was lost on this external drive. I'm not worried (at the moment) about the data lost since I was only making backup copies. Power cycling the external drive (a couple times) seems to bring it around and it is again recognized by windows. right now everything is fine, but I want to check the disk for errors. I used Windows XP tool (in disk properties) to check for errors (not surface errors) and it didn't find any. But I seem to recall that the windows tool inst very good. I also seem to recall that using the disk surface check may result in loss of some data. I have scanned the disk for virus and malware and it is clean. What tools / steps do recommend to assess this problem and the health of the drive?

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2008
    Typically I recommend the windows tool w/surface scan as a first line check. I have never experienced a loss of data when running it unless the data happened to be in bad parts of the drive that couldn't be recovered. In which case it's not really running the tool that caused the data loss in the first place. Then after I run the scan I'll do a couple defrags on it which gets the data moving around and probing the drive again.

    However it may not be the drive itself that is going bad it could be your enclosure and I don't know of any tests that can definitively check that.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2008
    I believe Seagate now has a copy of their Seatools software for Windows. The DOS version can do a sector scan, so I imagine their Win32 version can as well.
Sign In or Register to comment.