|
Hard Drive DiagnosticOK, running diagnostics on one of the newer hard drives is really a waste of time for two reasons. First, the prices of hard drives are so low these days that you would never tear into one to replace parts. And second, in the last 15 years there is often a built in software program (SMART) that monitors your hard drive for any possible issues and gives you a warning. So you want to run a hard drive diagnostic program on your hard drive to see if it is running properly. Well, you can certainly do that (and I'll tell you how in just a minute) but I'm not sure it's worth the time or trouble. As mentioned above, SMART (an acronym for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a software program for computer hard disk drive monitoring to detect and report on possible problems on hard drive reliability in order to anticipate probable hard drive failures. Unless you have a really old hard drive there's a good chance this SMART software may be on your hard drive. SMART will definitely nag you if it sees some type of critical issue with your hard drive every time you boot up. The error will mention some possible problem and tell you to do something, like replace the hard drive, if any serious threat exists. Now some people might want to go troubleshoot these errors and run hard drive diagnostic software but more often than not, you still end up replacing the hard drive since reliability is the number one factor on any hard drive. Many computer manufacturers also have a built in hard drive diagnostic test that is available by pressing F2 or another F key. You will often see a little message go by upon boot up that says if you want to go into setup, press F2. This will take you into a menu that has a hard drive test listed. All Dell computers have had this feature for at least 10 years. This hard drive test will tell you if there is any serous problem with your hard drive and tell you if there is a serious problem. I'm not sure exactly what software they are using but it might be worth giving it a shot if you have had hard drive problems. I've never used it so I can't say for sure what it might be doing other than running ChkDsk (more on that solution here: Hard Drive Sector Repair). In the old days (and I mean really old days like late eighties and early 90's) hard drives were very expensive and so it made since to actually repair physical parts or the circuitry board or other components that might have problems. Not so today with a brand new SATA 1 terabyte hard drive that run at 7200 rpm costing around $65. And who wants to take chances on losing their data? So the best advice I can give you is that if your hard drive is giving you problems, immediately back it up and then replace it with a brand new one. For the normal user, internal hard drive repairs are way out of their league due to the technology and tools necessary. Plus, most hard drive diagnostic software takes hours to run on the new larger drives and can be pretty technical. So the path of least resistance is to just replace your hard drive if it starts acting up rather than try and find the problem and fix it. OK, so you agree in principle but still want to run a hard drive diagnostic program to see exactly what the problem might be for some reason. OK, fine. The best software to use on 99% of the hard drives out there is the one provided by the manufacturer of your hard drive. It's free and will give you some very accurate information on your hard drive condition. In order to find the best software, first find out your exact brand and model, like Western Digital SATA WD2500KS 250 gig hard drive. You can then go to the Western Digital website and find the correct version of the hard drive diagnostic software for that particular drive and download it. There are many good commercial software programs but they really aren't necessary in most cases. There is a free hard drive diagnostic tool from Seagate that is pretty popular called Sea Tools. I'd give you the link but they keep changing it so the best way to find it is to just do a search in Google for Sea Tools. It runs on any brand of hard drive, internal or external, and provides a list of any issues it finds at the end of the scan. Sea Tools comes in two flavors. One for running as a Windows program and one for booting up in DOS. The DOS version comes as an ISO file which means you will need to download it, make a bootable CD, then boot from that CD to run it under DOS. But I will say this one more time. I've been in the computer repair business since the PC was first brought out and I really don't care what's wrong with a hard drive when it starts acting up. The best solution is to just replace the drive since the newer models are faster, larger, and cheaper than the one you want to run hard drive diagnostic software on in the first place. But it's up to you. And don't forget to make a back up before you try anything on your hard drive, better safe than sorry when it comes to losing your important data. |
|
