Hi.

OK, here's a question peripherally related to the recent posts on hard drive recovery.

I have a stack of hard drives here on the bench that are the result of gradually replacing the drives in my two main machines with larger ones. They vary in capacity from 20GB to 120GB, and with one exception, probably all work quite happily. I would like to go through them and test the things, to find out whether any are actually faulty. What's the best way to do this?

I know that the maxtor ones can be tested with the maxtor drive check software, but there are also ibm ones, hitachi ones, seagate ones, etc. Is there any generic HD reliability testing software (windows or linux) floating around?

I eventually want to use the good ones for backup purposes with an ide-usb converter cable, but backing up onto a possibly iffy hd isn't a very bright idea

The bad ones will be stripped and the platters removed for my slowly assembling tesla turbine project

pca

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

Pca

I use spinrite for this.

I've seen an ISO image some compiled with all of the vendor specific testing programs on it called the Ultimate Boot CD. Not the single program you asked about though.

My tool of choice is the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. It will test all PATA, SATA and SCSI drives, regardless of brand and/or S.M.A.R.T. support. It comes as a bootable floppy or bootable ISO image, using IBM PC-DOS.

It does have extra features when it recognizes the drive as an IBM or a Hitachi drive, though. It will offer to do repairs (using remapping) and it will write a log file that will enable you to automatically get an RMA on the Hitachi GST site.

Pim