Determining when hard drive is kaput

[FlaBill]

So many problems posted here seem to revolve around hard drives that
go bad.
I wonder if there is a step by step recipe for determining that the
drive is no longer usable.
What say you?

Bill

 

[Ghostrider]

So many problems posted here seem to revolve around hard drives that
go bad.
I wonder if there is a step by step recipe for determining that the
drive is no longer usable.
What say you?

Bill

Sure. Be suspicious of the hard drive all of the time. (Of course,
this type of thinking dates back to the days when hard drives were
spinning platters mounted in floor-standing consoles, where a speck
of dust will wreck it.) More seriously, a hard drive is no longer
usable when it can no longer be trusted. A second failure or physical
corruption is enough reason to declare it so.

 

[JS]

Download and run the appropriate Disk Diagnostic Utility
for your hard drive:

Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics
http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=3

Seagate's SeaTools
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Maxtor (Now Seagate SeaTools)
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Fujitsu's Utilities
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/support/utilities.html

Samsung's Disk manager software
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/shdiag.htm

Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test software
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

JS
www.pagestart.com