surface scan of hard drive

[Gabriel Knight]

Hi all im in need of a progie that can be run in windows xp to do a surface
scan of every cluster for bad sectors etc for a 160 gig NTFS Sata drive,
dose the scandisk.exe progie from a win98 boot disk work with NTFS Sata
drives?

Thanks
GK

 

[ShadowTek]

There is NO program that can be used while Windows is running especially
not scandisk.

You need to run chkdsk /f

you can run that from the command line

then say "yes" to having it run on reboot.

After you do that, you will find the scandisk report in your
administrator's event log. Look for the entry titled "winlogon", or
something like that.

 

[John Weiss]

Hi all im in need of a progie that can be run in windows xp to do a
surface scan of every cluster for bad sectors etc for a 160 gig NTFS Sata
drive, dose the scandisk.exe progie from a win98 boot disk work with NTFS
Sata drives?

Best tool I know of for this is SpinRite from Gibson Research
(www.grc.com). It doesn't care what OS or file system it is; it runs from
floppy or CD.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Hi all im in need of a progie that can be run in windows xp to do a surface
scan of every cluster for bad sectors etc for a 160 gig NTFS Sata drive,
dose the scandisk.exe progie from a win98 boot disk work with NTFS Sata
drives?

I'd try to find the drive manufacturer's diagnostic, but if for some
reason there isn't one for your particular drive, use Hitachi's Drive
Fitness Test (dft.exe) from www.hgst.com, which can do read scans of
any brand drive, or use HDtune, HDDscan, or the DOS-only equivalent,
MHDD. The latter two not only list bad sectors but also sectors
according to how long each took to read. MHDD is probably better for
this because Windows sometimes causes read delays itself.

 

[Flasherly]

Best tool I know of for this is SpinRite from Gibson Research
(www.grc.com). It doesn't care what OS or file system it is; it runs from
floppy or CD.

Yep, good ol Steve Gibson for thoroughly running it through fault-
tolerance paces, or have a look at some the CD all-in-one machine
diagnostics from the likes of HIREMS. I'd go there before any Windows
dependencies within Partition Magic or Diskeeper.

 

[JR Weiss]

The only problem with SpinRite is that due to the cost of it,
it's really only practical for repair shops...
one could just go out and get a new drive for the money it costs

Spinrite is well within the budget of any compu-geek. There are just too many
people out there looking for a "free" solution to their problem instead of a
GOOD solution!

 

[JR Weiss]

I agree, I was just pointing out that for a one time user, it would just be
cheaper to get a whole new drive!

However, if the reason for buying it is to recover data from a "dead" drive, the
cost of Spinrite may well be worth it -- and more!

Spinrite is certainly NOT only "practical for repair shops"!

 

[thanatoid]

The only problem with SpinRite is that due to the cost of
it, it's really only practical for repair shops...
one could just go out and get a new drive for the money it
costs

Yes, an /empty/ drive.

Compared to other data recovery software it's actually quite
reasonable not to mention 50 times smaller and supposedly very
good... But don't forget about the warez groups - while we
still have them. Someone who needs to do something like this
twice in their lifetime to recover a few letters and pix should
not have to spend either $50 or $500 on it... Those prices are
for pros.

There IS free data recovery software, BTW, but I forget the name
at the moment. Ran across it a few weeks ago - first one I've
seen.

 

[thanatoid]

I have used free utilities with some degree of success...
and I agree that if spin-rite gets data back from a
semi-dead drive, it's well worth it...
and one should not resort to pirated software

One /should not/ do MANY things...

Honestly now... Are you saying there is not a /single/ piece of
unpaid for but used for longer than 30 days shareware, nor a
/single/ piece of software with a serial /you/ didn't pay for on
/any/ of your systems?

I have paid $50 for free (not donation ware even) programs
because the author deserved it but I'm damned if I'm going to
pay some multimillion dollar "let's kill all the competition
first and worry about the customers later" software company $500
for a program something free (NOT pirated, FREE) does equally
well. I agree SpinRite falls somewhere in between here, but I
believe I have made my point clear.

/All/ software should be free for non-profit use - and MANY
software authors who are not in this for BMW's believe that, as
you well know. Not to mention their programs are often better
and/or essential. When are you gonna be able to print a
directory listing from Windows? NEVER.

Making a low-income family pay for 3 copies of an old Windows OS
which they run on computers they got free from a neighbour or
from Salvation Army under threat of imprisonment is insane.
Slapping a $200,000 (or whatever it was) fine on a 12-year old
who has the mp3 of her favorite TV show theme on her laptop is
insane as well.

Why do you get more time in jail for copying a DVD than for
killing someone?

All heil Amerika.