Overclocking Tests on Bootable CD/DVDs

[DRT]

Hi. Does anyone know of a good bootable CD/DVD that contains
utilities to benchmark and "torture" test an x86 system?

The torture tests need to be bootable from CD. The reason is that
several occasions now, I have aggressively overclocked my CPU and
memory to feel out the performance "envelope" of the new system.
But, for whatever reason, a critical Windows system file gets
corrupted and my OS installation is toast. :-( This has happened
several times now on me. Who knows, even if the system boots
without problems, maybe other files I don't know about can get
corrupted as well. Another good reason to do all tests from a
bootable CD and disconnect all HDDs to avoid any possible data
corruption during testing.

Yeah, I'm doing Acronis HDD backups now but that is pain. And I
still lose some data and system/app settings since my last backup if
I need to recover. Still got the possibility of corruption to other
files that the user won't be aware of too.

Something that boots up in either DOS or some simple Linux that
allows me to run equivalents of Memtest86+ and Prime95 would be ideal.

Any suggestions on this type of boot disc made specifically for
system testing?



Thanks.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

The torture tests need to be bootable from CD. The reason is
that several occasions now, I have aggressively overclocked
my CPU and memory to feel out the performance "envelope"
of the new system. But, for whatever reason, a critical
Windows system file gets corrupted and my OS installation
is toast. :-( This has happened several times now on me.

A good question, and I don't have an easy answer.
Normally I would recommend a Knoppix Linux boot CD
or Toms Root&Boot from floppy or ElT CD boot sectors.
Then burn/bring a disk with the utils.

You are quite right that testing should not be done on a
production system/HD due to the possibility of filesystem
damage. MS-Windows appears especially vulnerable.

My preferred testing sequence:

1) memtest-86+ to exhaustively test memory cells
2) my `burnMMX` to intensively test RAM busses & controllers
3) my `burnK7` to intensively test CPU cooling & power supply
(both somewhat old, but should work)
4) repeated, looped `md5sum /dev/hda1` to test HD read errors.


-- Robert author `cpuburn` http://pages.sbgclobal.net/redelm