Decent HDD testing tool?

[Zeno]

Anyone recommend a windows (or a something on a bootable disk maybe)
disk tool that can exercise drives (read and write)? Preferably
something that works with USB drives too.

I need something I can leave running for a few hours as I've been given
a number of drives I don't know the state of. These include a couple of
external USB ones inside a sealed case which I would have to physically
break to get access to the drives.

Any recommendations?

 

[Rod Speed]

Anyone recommend a windows (or a something on a bootable disk maybe) disk tool that can exercise drives (read and
write)?

Thats a pretty poor approach to testing a hard drive.

Bart's Disktool will do that.
http://www.nu2.nu/utils/

Preferably something that works with USB drives too.

That wont.

I need something I can leave running for a few hours as I've been given a number of drives I don't know the state of.

Makes more sense to run a SMART test on the drive and check the SMART report.
You can do that from a bootable live linux CD, run smartctl and do a full self test.

These include a couple of external USB ones inside a sealed case which I would have
to physically break to get access to the drives.

Thats harder. There isnt a lot of SMART support with external USB drives.

They arent well supported with stress testers either.

 

[Rod Speed]

Christian Franke wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Works also on Windows if supported by the driver. Then you can run e.g 'smartctl -t long C:' to run a full test in
background.

I mentioned the live CD because he said he wanted a bootable disk.

Or use it via the GSmartControl GUI frontend:
http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/

If this does not work, here is a list of live CDs:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/download.html#live-cd

I would recommend Parted Magic because it contains both smartctl and GSmartControl.

SMART support is now much better than in the past. It depends on the USB bridge:
http://smartmontools.wiki.sourceforge.net/overview_USB-Support

Likely that he's mostly looking at older USB drives tho, which is
why he wants to test them like that. No point with new drives.

 

[Arno]

Anyone recommend a windows (or a something on a bootable disk maybe)
disk tool that can exercise drives (read and write)? Preferably
something that works with USB drives too.

I need something I can leave running for a few hours as I've been given
a number of drives I don't know the state of. These include a couple of
external USB ones inside a sealed case which I would have to physically
break to get access to the drives.

Any recommendations?

Run long SMART selftests on them, preferrably several times, and look
at the SMART attributes before and after. For the USB drives
HDD sentinel (http://www.hdsentinel.com/) may help, the free
version does what you are looking for also for many USB drives.
The limitation I see is that I think it cannot test drives in
parallel. (No, I am not affiliated with them, they just happen
to produce a good tool with an entriely usable free version.)

If you want even more exercise, what I once did to kill a drive
(had suspicuous SMART values, but was not dead yet) is to have
it compile Linux kernels in a loop. Took it 2 weeks do die,
but it did eventually.

Arno

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Anyone recommend a windows (or a something on a bootable disk maybe)
disk tool that can exercise drives (read and write)? Preferably
something that works with USB drives too.

I need something I can leave running for a few hours as I've been given
a number of drives I don't know the state of. These include a couple of
external USB ones inside a sealed case which I would have to physically
break to get access to the drives.

Look for instructions on how to open up external cases? The
instructions aren't that hard to find for certain designs.

www.hdat2.com and www.HDDguru.com have some test utilities, like
HDAT2, MHDD, Victoria, and HDDscan (I recently used it on a WD USB
drive). Those places also have forums where the primary topic is HD
repair.