Hard drive reliability test

[polobunny]

I find myself often having to test a hard drive for it's reliability as it could be the unknown reason to my problem when diagnosing a computer.
However, most of the time I will just take a hard drive that i'm 100% sure is working properly and swap out the HDD or ghost the contents of the HDD if needed.
I was wondering if anyone knew of a good software to test a hard drive for reliability, preferably a bootable solution.

I checked alot of softwares, including tools provided by Maxtor, Western Digital and Hitachi but none of them includes enough information about reliability. Most of them only show me SMART values, which are not always picturing the reality anyway.

Thanks for you help.

[Jokerswild]

Drop it from a 3 story building and if it still works then that a good drive.

[Panda Man]

I always thought Ultimate Boot CD had a tester with it.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Hard Drive fitness test perhaps?

[drew and not u]

HDD Health is a great little utility that monitors every aspect of HDDs and reports any current or potential problems. It can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

[Jokerswild]

Originally Posted by drew and not u

HDD Health is a great little utility that monitors every aspect of HDDs and reports any current or potential problems. It can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Looks good Drew thanks.

[Lead Head]

I know seagate DiskTools or something can check HDs for any problems, not just smart status, but give them an actual test

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Lead Head

I know seagate DiskTools or something can check HDs for any problems, not just smart status, but give them an actual test

I'm searching for something like that, you know... something that I could print and show the client and it would show them it's broken. Showing them that there's data corruption by manually checking a file CRC isn't really explicit to alot of people. :P

I thought I check this though, as I have my Hiren Boot CD always with me. Apparently I didn't, or my version is outdated.

Edit: I was going to check for SeaTools as Lead Head suggested but I saw Panda Man post at the same time. I checked in the list of included software for UBCD and 2 SeaTools version were there. Downloaded the basic version of the UBCD, burned it and started SeaTools desktop thingamajig. EXACTLY what I was looking for. Kudos guys! Rep given. (Fake rep that is, since the rep hack doesn't seem to be there anymore. =O )

[Panda Man]

2 great successes in one day for me! A NEW RECORD!

Glad to hear you got it working polo ;)

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Panda Man

2 great successes in one day for me! A NEW RECORD!

Glad to hear you got it working polo ;)

Who would have thought you could be useful! j/k
Yep, I recommend it to anyone it is very easy to do. I tried it on a drive that I know was starting to fail (click of death) and it found a problem with it. :)

I will try Drew windows app too, because apart from being one crazy guy i'm also one lazy guy. =P

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Drop it from a 3 story building and if it still works then that a good drive.

LOL I wish!!