Disk health measurement...

[Geir Holmavatn]

Hi,

A few of our Dell Latitude notebooks take almost 'forever' to boot.
There are no viruses or adware involved (have tested with different
tools).

However I notices when runing scandisk the tests perform very slowly on
certain areas of the disk.

Does it exist tools (under winxp) which measures disk health - i.e. keep
track of how many retries (if any) it takes to read selected parts of
the disk.

Thanks for tips on this issue

regards

Tor

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

A few of our Dell Latitude notebooks take almost 'forever' to boot.
There are no viruses or adware involved (have tested with different
tools).

However I notices when runing scandisk the tests perform very slowly on
certain areas of the disk.

Does it exist tools (under winxp) which measures disk health - i.e. keep
track of how many retries (if any) it takes to read selected parts of
the disk.

Thanks for tips on this issue

Tor

Just use a SMART utility to do a long disk selftest.
For getting past problems, read the SMART attributes
with the SMART utility. Post them here, if you want help
with the interpretation.

A commandline SMART tool is smartctl from the smartmontools
which run also under XP and are available fro free here:

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

A few of our Dell Latitude notebooks take almost 'forever' to boot.
There are no viruses or adware involved (have tested with different tools).

However I notices when runing scandisk the tests perform very slowly on certain areas of the disk.

Does it exist tools (under winxp) which measures disk health - i.e. keep track of how many retries
(if any) it takes to read selected parts of the disk.

Best to run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic on the drive
and check the SMART data. Everest can tell you the manufacturer
of the hard drive and show you the SMART data. Post the SMART
data here, dont just go by the OK values on the end of the lines.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

Some Dell notebooks are notorious for running the hard drives
at the extreme end of what is allowed temperature wise and
see an obscene hard drive failure rate as a result.