I need a hard drive diagnostic I can run against a hard drive in Windows. DOS mode is right out seeing as I am diagnosing drives over a wide area network without an on-site visit.
I have a tool made by one of my vendors that will do this when I am working on Product X, a Windows 2000 machine with Maxtor hard disk drives.
This tool is reasonably accurate when compared to Maxtor’s proprietary tools for diagnosing drives.
I have a different product, running either Maxtor or IBM/Hitachi drives and Windows 2000 Pro, that I would like a Windows-operable hard disk drive tester for.
Is such a beast commercially or otherwise available? Anyone have reccomendations?
I’ve always used DOS boot disk-based utilities that offer direct access to the hardware for this sort of thing, but, as you’ve said, this is not an option for you.
Since I’ve never had to do HDD diagnostics remotely, I don’t have any experience with this particular program, but it seems like the freeware HDDScan could prove to be a nice fit for someone in your situation. It can run under Windows 2000 or XP.