How to Check My Hard Drive
By ryan ~ March 3rd, 2008. Filed under: hardware, pc help.
If your computer experiences weird errors or simply shuts down periodically it may be due to a bad hard drive. Another good indication of a bad hard drive is strange sounds coming directly from the drive itself.
Most people usually take their computer in to be serviced which can cost money. There is a nice little program called Drive Fitness Test that you can run on your computer in order to see if your hard drive has a problem. Drive Fitness Test (aka DFT) is a program designed by IBM for test ing purposes for either professionals or consumers.
To use DFT click this link and scroll down to Drive Fitness Test. Download the CD image to your computer then burn it as an image file onto a CD. All CD burning software allows you to burn a CD from an image file (not data cd, not audio cd, just from an image file!) This particlular file is in ISO format which is the standard in CD images.
Once you have it burned onto a CD correctly simply leave the CD in your CD drive and reboot your computer. The computer should boot directly to the CD and from there you’ll be able to test your hard drive. If your computer doesn’t boot to the CD then you have to check your BIOS settings to make sure the boot order is correct and in this order; CD:Hard Drive. Some computers may have floppy or network boot options, those don’t matter as long as CD (or DVD) is BEFORE the hard drive. If it still doesn’t boot to the CD then make sure you have burned the CD correctly. Remember to burn the CD from an image.
If you’re still having trouble getting it to work then go back to the download page and download Diskette creator for Windows OS and make some floppy disks to boot from.
Good luck and Happy Burning!