Check the health of hard disks, even from a bootable CD, with Sea Tools
SeaTools is a free and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that will help you determine the condition of your internal or external hard drives, on a desktop or a laptop computer. It includes several tests that will examine the physical media on a Seagate, Maxtor or any other disk drive.
The purpose of SeaTools diagnostics is to save you time, data, and money by helping you keep healthy hard disk drives.
SeaTools for Windows tests SATA, USB, 1394, ATA (PATA/IDE) and SCSI drives, and is data safe.
SeaTools for DOS tests SATA or ATA drives from a bootable CD-ROM. It can test a SATA (Serial ATA) or older ATA (PATA/IDE) interface hard drive. Because the software boots to its own operating system you can test your drive regardless of the OS installed on it. You can even test a new or completely blank drive. In addition, this version offers limited repair and data erasure.