I know that each HD manufacturer has their own but are there any free tools (that you've used or seen used) that can do it while windows is loaded?

Basically something similar to scandisk but a little more detailed and hopefully faster.

5/2/2006 9:00:22 PM

n/m windows

[Edited on May 2, 2006 at 9:21 PM. Reason : ]

5/2/2006 9:20:47 PM

Can you be a little more specific about what you are trying to test/find out?

5/3/2006 5:05:41 AM

HDTach?

5/3/2006 7:22:15 AM

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

5/3/2006 8:00:47 AM

I didn't want to be too specific as I would like to know everything about the drive I could possibly ever need.

Standard stuff:
Bad sectors
Corrupt data
Actual Size
Partioned
etc

Non standard
Communication problems if any
Primary or Slave
etc

Something to effect of the DxDiag output would be awesome. Spinrite looks cool but I was hoping for something opensource. I keep running into harddrives that are questionable and keep having issues yet nothing is wrong according to the manufacturer's tools. Of course I have to figure out what kind of drive it is... make a boot disk, boot the computer that way and let it run and it's a big hassle.

I just want to stick in my USB drive and walla there's the program.

5/3/2006 10:10:35 AM