Help with a dodgy HDD..........?

[mo786]

Hi,

I have a 2 month old Samsung 400gb SATA drive.

Recently Windows ahs been crashing and my files take ages to load - apparently classic signs of a faulty hard drive. My S.M.A.R.T status is also BAD on loading the BIOS. I ran SpinRite on the HDD but as far as I could see it didn't spot any errors.

So any ideas on a decent tool that can tell me (in an easy format) if there are any faults?
If not then why would the SMART status be bad? (I need to press F1 to move past that stage of the boot up)

Finally, if I sent my HDD back to the manufacturer does anyone know any decent software that can erase all the files on my disk properly so the techies can't see some of my old file?

Thanks.

 

[rpstewart]

The latest version of Speedfan has a pretty good SMART analysis tool built in, it'll tell you which of the parameters is the problem.

There's a Linux based boot CD which you can use to erase the disk but I've forgotten the name of it. If you can find the ebay pr0n drive thread it's mentioned in there and you can have a good laugh at the same time.