How to check harddrive health from bootup

steinooo · 12 Mar 2016 at 11:33

HI all,

I've inherited a laptop which won't boot and first thing I want to check out is the health of the HDD (It's a mechanical one but the laptop has a cache for the disc)

Can anyone recommend a tool which I can boot via USB with to check the disc drive's health please?

KIA · 12 Mar 2016 at 12:52

Ubuntu live.

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/disk-check.html

Philtor · 13 Mar 2016 at 10:10

Install Ultimate Boot CD to a flash drive.

On Holiday · 13 Mar 2016 at 10:12

If it's quick health check then Ubuntu Live will do.

If you want to fully test the drives then SeaTools for DOS.

steinooo · 15 Mar 2016 at 11:22

thanks all, I used UBCD as I remember that (seems like years ago since I used it!) and ran SeaTools and it did indeed produce errors. I imagine the disk can't be salvaged now, but at least I know!

KIA · 15 Mar 2016 at 16:41

Errors as in...