Comments on: What's a good, preferably free, diagnostics program for Windows?

Question: What's a good, preferably free, diagnostics program for Windows?

Grinder — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:38:35 -0800

What's a good, preferably free, diagnostics program for Windows?

I've been asked to look at a Windows laptop which had a hard disk crash recently. I want to do a low-level disk scan and general test of the electronics, like what Norton Disk Doctor et al for DOS used to do, but don't use Windows much any more and don't know what would be good. Does any one have any suggestions? (Free options preferred.)

By: various

various — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:52:40 -0800

I recently used SeaTools for DOS on my Windows XP machine. It was easy to use and fixed my disk problems. You can download it free at the middle of this page.

By: flabdablet's sock puppet

flabdablet's sock puppet — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:07:13 -0800

Trinity Rescue Kit is what I generally use for this kind of job. It has smartmontools, GNU ddrescue and ntfs-3g preinstalled among other useful things.

By: 5imian

5imian — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:53:47 -0800

memtest 86 is an ancient and useful tool for certain things.

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:24:21 -0800

I recommend HDTune for hard drives. It can do surface scans, performance testing, and read SMART error codes. Its free.

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:25:29 -0800

Also, you'll want to use the built-in chkdsk for file system scanning/error correction.

By: aheckler

aheckler — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:37:33 -0800

Ultimate Boot CD has a lot of diagnostic tools included. It's saved my butt more than a few times.