Hard Drive Diagnostics Tool?

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ColTom2

Hi:

The other day I was helping a friend with his Dell computer that would not
bootup. I called his free Dell Tech Support and they ran me through a
process that diagnosed his 250GB hard drive which it found a bad sector. The
process took a considerable amount of time (approx 2 hours).

Now I cannot recall the process they led me though to run this diagnostic
tool or whatever it was on his hard drive. The process did not require any
third party applications and was a part of Windows MCE(2005).

Any help in identifying this process where I could run it again will be
appreciated.

Thanks,

ColTom2
 
ColTom2 said:
Hi:

The other day I was helping a friend with his Dell computer that would not
bootup. I called his free Dell Tech Support and they ran me through a
process that diagnosed his 250GB hard drive which it found a bad sector. The
process took a considerable amount of time (approx 2 hours).

Now I cannot recall the process they led me though to run this diagnostic
tool or whatever it was on his hard drive. The process did not require any
third party applications and was a part of Windows MCE(2005).

Any help in identifying this process where I could run it again will be
appreciated.
Click to expand...


To have windows check the drive , run chkdsk /f

then reboot...

Of course to give the drive an even better checkup you will need to
download and run the HF mfg's diagnostic utility
 
A lot of Dell systems have a built-in diagnostic partition. During boot
(Dell logo on the screen) press F12 to bring up the "One-Time" boot menu.
If the diagnostics are built onto the hard drive, you will see the option
listed there. If it's not listed there, it will be on the "diagnostic &
tools" CD that came with the computer.

Just because a hard drive has a bad sector, doesn't necessarily mean that
the hard drive is bad. Hard drives have a large number of "spare" sectors
that can be mapped in in place of a bad one. I'd find out what brand of
hard drive is in the machine, and download and run the diagnostic tool that
was made by that manufacturer. If that tells you the drive is bad, believe
it. Get a new drive and reinstall Windows. From there you can recover any
data you can from the old drive by hooking it up to the system as a "slave"
drive and transferring (copying) it to the new drive.
 
Hi:

Now that you mention it I did use a Dell CD to run the diagnostics on his
hard drive. I could not recall doing that.

Thanks,

Col Tom2


A lot of Dell systems have a built-in diagnostic partition. During boot
(Dell logo on the screen) press F12 to bring up the "One-Time" boot menu.
If the diagnostics are built onto the hard drive, you will see the option
listed there. If it's not listed there, it will be on the "diagnostic &
tools" CD that came with the computer.

Just because a hard drive has a bad sector, doesn't necessarily mean that
the hard drive is bad. Hard drives have a large number of "spare" sectors
that can be mapped in in place of a bad one. I'd find out what brand of
hard drive is in the machine, and download and run the diagnostic tool that
was made by that manufacturer. If that tells you the drive is bad, believe
it. Get a new drive and reinstall Windows. From there you can recover any
data you can from the old drive by hooking it up to the system as a "slave"
drive and transferring (copying) it to the new drive.
 
Now that you mention it I did use a Dell CD to run the diagnostics on his
hard drive. I could not recall doing that.
Click to expand...

After Dell warranties expire, it may be more to the
point to run diagnostics of the drive's manufacturer
-- done by:
1. Belarc system analysis from www.belarc.com
2. Belarc usually identifies the manufacturer and
model number of each hard drive. We can then
go to manufacturers' web sites and download the
diagnostic utility recommended for each model.
 
Go to the hd mfg web,its important to get the MS-DOS based drive chk
utility,its 100X better than windows version,install to MS-DOS formatted
floppy,boot to floppy..Also,to repair,go to run,type:cmd In cmd type:
CHKDSK C: /R Agree,type:EXIT Restart pc...With a bad sector,repair may
work for a while (1 wk to few months),however you can count on hd failure...
 
ColTom2 said:
Hi:

The other day I was helping a friend with his Dell computer that would
not
bootup. I called his free Dell Tech Support and they ran me through a
process that diagnosed his 250GB hard drive which it found a bad sector.
The
process took a considerable amount of time (approx 2 hours).

Now I cannot recall the process they led me though to run this diagnostic
tool or whatever it was on his hard drive. The process did not require any
third party applications and was a part of Windows MCE(2005).

Any help in identifying this process where I could run it again will be
appreciated.

Thanks,

ColTom2
Click to expand...

You could run chkdsk /r from the command prompt. This checks all of the
sectors of the disk and tries to recover bad sectors. chkdsk /f only fixex
file system errors.

There is a progran called HDTune which has a disk scanning component.
http://www.hdtune.com/
 
Now that you mention it I did use a Dell CD to run the diagnostics on his
hard drive. I could not recall doing that.
Click to expand...

Only the more responsible computer manufacturers provide these
comprehensive hardware diagnostics. Take a further look sometime.
Diagnostics are provided for every hardware device inside the
computer. Those diagnostics made more effective by executing directly
to hardware and without complications created by Windows. That is the
problem with the CHKDSK solution and other suggestions that accomplish
what a diagnostic without Windows can do ... and so quickly.

Only a few computer manufactures provide these; for free and almost
forever. Another implied diagnostics expire when the warranty does.
Nonsense. As was standard even before PCs existed, a responsible
computer manufacturer provides comprehensive hardware diagnostics for
free.

Those diagnostic may be on a CD or may be loaded in a separate
partition on the disk drive. Also available from their web site - for
free of course.
 
That's a hands off approach the diagnostic is taking. Simply identifying a
bad sector does nothing. Unless, of course, it substantiates a replacement
from Dell.

--
Dave
Profound is we're here due to a chance arrangement
of chemicals in the ocean billions of years ago.
More profound is we made it to the top of the food
chain per our reasoning abilities.
Most profound is the denial of why we may
be on the way out.
 
That's a hands off approach the diagnostic is taking. Simply identifying a
bad sector does nothing. Unless, of course, it substantiates a replacement
from Dell.

--
Dave
Profound is we're here due to a chance arrangement
of chemicals in the ocean billions of years ago.
More profound is we made it to the top of the food
chain per our reasoning abilities.
Most profound is the denial of why we may
be on the way out.
 
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