Looking for good, comprehensive HDD diagnostic utilites.

[x30Jx]

I have two Western Digital HDD's that I used to use, but my needed storage space outgrew them. Now I am thinking about selling them, but I have not used either in months, so I want to run some good diagnostics to make sure that I am not going to be selling someone a hard drive that is just going to crap out on them.

Any ideas?

[Perineum]

There is not really any way to know for sure, however, the HD manufacturer will have software that will check that the drive has not tried to work outside certain parameters yet, which is all you can do with regards to HDs.

[Bloodystumps]

You could use one of the programs from WD lifegaurd tools that should be sufficient enough to check and also clean them up for you .

Remember to wipe 3 times you don't want some one to be walking around with your dirty drive ;)

[Nodscene]

1 wipe is enough, 3 is just a waste of time.

[enaberif]

Manufacturers tools are the best but other than that I've had good luck with HDAT2

[Bloodystumps]

Originally Posted by Nodscene

1 wipe is enough, 3 is just a waste of time.

Let me rephrase that. Don't forget to properly wipe the drive .
I apologize Nodscene for my poor attempt at humor .

[x30Jx]

Thanks very much for the info, guys. The utilities returned great results; the drives are great.

Questions about erasing the disks though; there are two options for data erasure; quick and full. Quick lays down zeros over the first and last million bytes, full does the entire drive. Full is expected to take 17 hours+. Do I need to be paranoid enough to warrant zeroing out the entire drive, or just the quick erase a few times.

[Stosh]

HD Sentinel is a fantastic drive utility.

The latest version covers just about every SSD out there, but you'd have to check the site to make absolutely sure.

[Stosh]

Originally Posted by x30Jx

Thanks very much for the info, guys. The utilities returned great results; the drives are great.

Questions about erasing the disks though; there are two options for data erasure; quick and full. Quick lays down zeros over the first and last million bytes, full does the entire drive. Full is expected to take 17 hours+. Do I need to be paranoid enough to warrant zeroing out the entire drive, or just the quick erase a few times.

if you don't wipe the entire drive, someone with recovery software can still pull data off of it.