Hard Drive Error Checking

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digitaloracle

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I have a few questions on hard drives:
1.) Do they have some sort of built in error checking?
2.) Do they verify their writes (ie do they write data then veryify it)
3.) Is there a good, free, and compete HD diagnostic and testing utility that boots of a CD?

I ask because I have a few questionable drives (oldish, perhaps damaged due to my carelessness) That I want to check, as I will be putting unbacked up data on them.
 
Hello,

It depends mostly on the operating system you'll be using. Windows, for example, enforces it's own files sytem on the hard drive. You can simply use the in built tools such as CHKDSK and DEFRAG to ensure your HDD is healthy. Really, that should be all you need to do. There is however, the isue of mechanical faults, however because you can't crack open a HDD to check, you'll have to rely on things like overheating, strange sounds and fireworks in your system'd case :) .
 
i never used HD Tools, but i did save these links from somewere incase i ever needed a starting point....

All the Hard Drive Tools You'll Ever Need
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/be_hdd.html http://sac-ftp.externet.hu/utildisk1.html http://www.wtysoft.com/product.htm
Driveletter Assigment:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307844
Better Disk Formatter: ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utildisk/bdformat.zip
Disk Analysis: http://www.mhdd.com/files/mhdd/mhdd29.zip http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/dfsee6xx.zip
S.M.A.R.T: http://www.sysinfolab.com/files/smartudm.zip http://www.panterasoft.com/download/hhealth.exe
Disk Wiping: http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/WIPE.html#LLF http://www.jetico.com/bcwipe.exe
Low Level Format: ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utildisk/lowfmt.zip http://download2.lsoft.net/killdisk.zip
Partition Managers: http://www.ranish.com/part/ http://zeleps.com/ http://www.powerquest.com/
Data Recovery Programs: http://www.quetek.com/ http://www.runtime.org/ http://www.z-a-recovery.com/
Acoustic Management (Reduce Drive Noise)http://www.hitachigst.com/downloads/ftool_ver194.exe
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http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
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you can also prolly check the manufaturers website

EDIT: i think someone once said that HD's do have a built in verifying proccess, but i dont now anything about it, like how that may vary on old drives.

since i have a WD, iv used Westerndigitals Datalife gaurd tool, for drive to drive copy functions, because it verifys as it copys, so it will report if theres any errors during the proccess. its free for download at there site, and im guessing it can be used with any drive, not just WD.

for any specific file u wont to keep verifyed from corruption, u can google "easy sfv creator" its a free program that creats a crc, or hash(or watever its called i dont know).sfv file witch u can run at any time to error check the file.
 
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