Checking/Repairing hard disk errors

[leemac13]

Can anybody please recomend some software that can check and or repair hard disk errors. Preferably in Dos or from boot as unable to instal an O/S at min.

 

Cheers

[plexer]

If the h/d is that damaged then best to throw it out.

 

Ben

[maniac]

If we have a HDD with errors it gets replaced, as once you get one or two faults on a disc more quickly follow in my experience.

 

If your equipment is under warranty, then HDD faults should be covered. Manufacturers like Dell, HP etc. have their own diagnostics utilities which will test the HDD and generate fault codes which you can then give to their support, they will then replace the drive no questions asked normally. For other manufactuers, we use one of the many utilities on the Ultimate Boot CD that analyses the disk for faults.

[CESIL]

+1 for Ultimate Boot CD

[mac_shinobi]

If XP then I use recovery console --> chkdsk /r

 

If that can fix then great, if not then a full format will make the drive ignore any bad sectors or areas of the drive and if that fails then normally a new hard drive and scrap the broken one ie drilling holes in it, dban with a secure erase option, or hammer etc ??

[User3204]

We have a copy of Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows which has saved us quite a few times.

 

The licensing was a bit wierd when we bought it, per technician... huh ?

 

It will recover files when you can't access the partition, and will recover files from previously deleted partitions too. You need to install it onto another machine, and connect the disks through USB or similar.

 

 

 

Oh, and while I think about it, if you have Vista/7 you can sometimes fix disk faults on the boot drive, by connecting them to another machine and running chkdsk against them.

[Arthur]

+2 for Ultimate Boot CD. It has everything you need.

 

Either do what Maniac suggested and run the hard drive (or laptop) manufacturer's diagnostics utility, or alternatively MHDD. The latter program has an option to repair bad sectors and also view the drives SMART attributes which will tell you if you should replace the drive based on the number of bad sectors...

 

The most important thing is the raw value of «Reallocated Sectors Count» attribute, which says how many remaps are on the drive. Normally, you should always have zero there. If it is more than 50 — you have a problem. (Source)