On Wednesday 28 January 2004 1:41 pm, Martin Mielke wrote:

besides http://ltp.sourceforge.net/ is there any other tool for stressing the HD and finding out possible errors, weaknesses, bad sectors/clusters, etc? Please provide some usage examples :-)

I have found that some HD errors only show up after a long period of time or when the system is busy doing heavy I/O tasks...

I highly recommend the Maxtor PowerMax disk diagnostics -- from the people who make the hardware (though they run on other brands of hard drives also). They are available free at the Maxtor website and run off a floppy (they use Caldera DR-DOS just to get started). They have various levels of both nondestructive and destructive testing, including a (non-desctructive) burn-in test. These diagnostics, unlike many others, check the whole drive without regard to partitions or their contents. Paul Abrahams

Martin Mielke wrote:

Hi all,

besides http://ltp.sourceforge.net/ is there any other tool for stressing the HD and finding out possible errors, weaknesses, bad sectors/clusters, etc? Please provide some usage examples :-)

I have found that some HD errors only show up after a long period of time or when the system is busy doing heavy I/O tasks...

Martin, Check out http://www.ultimatebootcd.com. HD tool heaven and a good CD to have in your collection. Damian