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How to test Hard drives?

D

dioxholster

Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2010
Messages
801
I know about the windows option to test them which takes a long time, thats not what im after. The thing is, i got two old 500GB drives from 2007 and i want to throw one of them away. But how do i determine which one is better??
 
Every manufacturer has its own software, you could go to their official website and download their tool.

You'll usually be looking for a "fitness test", etc..
 
DSee said:
Every manufacturer has its own software, you could go to their official website and download their tool.

You'll usually be looking for a "fitness test", etc..
Click to expand...

what if both drives pass the "fitness test"? they are western digital
 
I would just use http://www.hdtune.com/ basicly the program will tell you if the drives are good.bad & you can even test the drives to see wich one if Faster.

Its very simple to use download it open it and look at the options. You can mess it up

Benchmark: all you gotta do is click Start & it will test the speed of the HDD
Error scan: Click start will test if its bad or not.

you can also download

Crystal Disk (CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software)
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
 
DSee said:
Every manufacturer has its own software, you could go to their official website and download their tool.

You'll usually be looking for a "fitness test", etc..
Click to expand...
Ding ding we have a winner! Most manufacturers tools are bootable ISOs, it's always better to test a drive outside of the OS it boots from, and and most will repair bad sectors or tell you in depth what is wrong with the drive.

Seagate: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
Western Digital: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=612&sid=30&lang=en
Hitachi: http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/
Samsung: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html
 
i got two options, HD tune and the bootable one. one thing i forgot to mention, how can i tell both hard disks apart? they are the same one with the same name and such. I always confuse them.
 
All manufacturer tests will log the serial number ;)
 
Seatools for Windows is a convenient tool to use. For non-Seagate drives you can run the generic short test, or generic long test. For Seagate drives it can also try to repair damaged disks which is nice.
 
If you want to TEST the drives, use the manufacturer's tools.

If you want to BENCHMARK the drive, use HDTune, HDTach, CDM, etc (list in faq).

Don't throw the drive away, sell it or give it away. (FS/T forum, which also has a freebie thread).
 
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