Check Hard Drive for Errors?

H

havokator

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
197
Is there a program I can use to check a hard drive for errors? I think the drive is starting to go bad, so I dont want to use it if it has any serious errors. Thank you.
 
Look at the SMART data for the drive with a program like CrystalDiskInfo. This information is statistics that the drive keeps on how many problems it has had since it was first used.
 
You could also just use smartmontools (available for any OS) and run:

smartctl -H [disk]
 
WDDLG works with any hard drive if you want to do a surface scan, even though it's geared more towards WD hard drives.

Checking SMART status will only get you so far.
 
A lot of the drive manufacturers have a Windows based test program you can get from their website.

HD Tune also has a test function you can use.

Don
 
Where can I get this WDDLG program? I searched for it but I havent found a site for it.

If the drive passed HD Tune's Error Check, should I consider it to be working 100%? Sometimes the drive makes a strange noise, that is why I am a little concerned.
 
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Also, I checked the SMART data for the drive, but I am a little confused about how to understand it. There are 5 columns titled, Current, Worst, Threshold, Data, and Status. And then there are like 20 different rows under these columns such as 'Raw Read Error Rate', 'Reallocated Sector Count'. What am I looking for to determine the drives health?
 
I look at the raw values for

Reallocated_Sector_Ct
Current_Pending_Sector
Offline_Uncorrectable

and

UDMA_CRC_Error_Count



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Reallocated_Sector_Ct can be non zero but you do not want to see this growing on a daily bases.

Current_Pending_Sector and Offline_Uncorrectable you want to see these being 0 because they tell you the drive has bad sectors that were written to and it can not read the contents. I have sometimes seen non zero numbers for these two on drives that were quick formatted and after a full format these go back to zero.

UDMA_CRC_Error_Count tells you about interface problems. Sometimes you will see a small number here but if you have 1000s here there is either a cable problem, a SATA card problem or the hard drive interface card is bad.
 
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