BleepingComputer.com: I see dead drives!

Well I was going thru a bunch of hard drives that were sitting on a shelf and wanted to see if any of them were any good. I have Seagate, Western Digital and Maxtor in the bunch. I got the ultimate boot CD and tried running some of the OEM specific tests but couldn't get any of them to work. The Western Digital test which is Data Lifeguard didn't have ANY diagnostics that I was abel to locate. It gave me the options to set up the hard drive and to maintain it but not diagnose it.

None of the other tests gave me anything either. I tried one of the other, independent tests, and it took me 2 hours but I was abel to scan one drive. The only thing this told me was that the SMART test was good. When I connect these drives as slaves, none of them are recognized.

Is there something else I can get to check these drives?

Try checking here - http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic28744.html

There are links to each hard drive manufacturers individual testing utilities.

Hope this helps,

Where is it that they are not recognized at? My computer? Device manager? Disk management?

My computer shows no slave drives, just my C drive... Here's what I've been doing.

senario 1: I have my normal main SATA drive connected. I hook up a second SATA drive and go to my computer. Second drive is not listed. Reboot a couple of times and sometimes it will show up.

senario 2: I have my main SATA drive connected and hook up a second IDE drive. Same issue as senario 1.

senario 3: I take a secondary SATA drive and attempt to load WIndows XP on it. It shows that it is loading the files but then when it reboots it doesn't go to the splash screen and install. Instead it gives me an error that says no OS found. I thought maybe the drive was having a problem so I run the OEM (Western Digital) Data Life Guard and it doesn't even offer me the option of a "test"; I just see set up a drive, maintain a drive, partition and information.

I unhook that drive and slap in one of the IDE's and try running a test; drive not found.

The tool you're looking for for the western digital drives is on this page. When you get there, look for "Diag504fCD.iso" and click the download button to the right of that file name.

Burn that iso to disk and then connect the "suspected" defective western digital drives to the computer. Put that Disk you just burned in your cd/dvd drive and boot from it. This Western Digital's "WD diag" program.

If there is a problem with the drive this will find it.

What other testing utilities are you looking for? ( seagate, hitachi, maxtor, etc. )

I have got a couple of Seagate drives and a couple of Maxtor drives as well.

Click here. This will take you to the Seagate Seatools page. Click on "Download SeaTools for DOS now!". This will take you to the registration page for Seagate Seatools. Enter your E-mail address and click submit.

The next page will ask you which version you want. Click on "EN" under "ISO CD-ROM Image". This will start the download of your Seatools iso image.

Burn the image to CD and you can then boot your computer from this disk.

*NOTE* Seagate Seatools has replaced Maxtor MaxBlast as Seagate now owns Maxtor.

Hope this helps,