Utility to check disk for errors?

is there a utility to check a disk for errors physically etc? I have an HD that keeps blinking but I cant find any spyware causing it

Run chkdsk in windows.

I remember there was a better one than that I had a problem with my old hard drive and I ran this util on it and there were errors and it gave a much more complete check of the disk

All harddrive manufacturers also have downloadable harddrive diagnostics. Just get the one from your particular drive's manu

If you're worried about disk access try Filemon or the newer Process Monitor. I've ran both and Filemon is a little simpler to understand, but less powerful. Both will tell you what is accessing your drive and causing your activity light to blink.

But there was one that actually did a test and showed you how many times the drive had to try to spin up or attempt to read something etc and my old drive showed a tonne of errors on it and a few months later it died.

But there was one that actually did a test and showed you how many times the drive had to try to spin up or attempt to read something etc and my old drive showed a tonne of errors on it and a few months later it died.

Also I ran filemon and the weird thing is that I close everything, and NOTHING new shows up in filemon- but my disc access light is still blinking like the shortest little blips possible about 1 second apart... all the time. I don't get it.

You running Vista on a fresh install?

That could be indexing at work

Neur0mancer said:

You running Vista on a fresh install?

That could be indexing at work

Click to expand...

Its XP pro and the install is like 8 months old. How do you turn off indexing in XP?

Also I was just playing world in conflict and I noticed something which was never there, when I just 'walk along' with the camera in a straight line, there is a studder. Not a lower framerate, just a studder every 10th of a second or so which makes the overall movement choppy. I've noticed this same phenomenon in TF2 but in TF2 its like every 5th of a second...

The blinking hard drive timing does not line up with the studdering in the games.


It is also worth noting the following- This system previously had an HD failure which was preceded by the same sort of problems- Also in the house within 1 week of that a 2.5" SATA hitachi drive on a laptop failed (laptop was on AC all the time) which leads me to believe there may be power issues in this place.

I have the same damn problem, the light blinks for no reason, in either xp or vista and even ubunutu. No virus, no indexing, nothing running and yet it continues.

Here my topic on it -> Linky

My video of the activity light -> Linky

I just know theres another diagnostic I just need the right person to chime in.
I ran the WD diagnostic on it for thirteen hours and it came back "PASS" and S.M.A.R.T. "PASS" but I'd like more specific info than that...

Is this the drive with your OS? if you ran filemon and saw nothing scrolling by, then I'd try to re-run it and check your settings, there's always something going on even when you aren't doing anything.

terran2k said:

Is this the drive with your OS? if you ran filemon and saw nothing scrolling by, then I'd try to re-run it and check your settings, there's always something going on even when you aren't doing anything.

Click to expand...

yes its the OS drive. I'll check again and check the settings

Theocnoob said:

I just know theres another diagnostic I just need the right person to chime in.
I ran the WD diagnostic on it for thirteen hours and it came back "PASS" and S.M.A.R.T. "PASS" but I'd like more specific info than that...

Click to expand...

Theo,

There is another diags program, Spinrite 6 but it ain't free. It's much more specific than WD Diags.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

RollingThunder: Anything similar but free?
I useed something like spinrite once before. Told me the drive I had at the time was impending doom.

2 months later, bang dead.

Theocnoob said:

RollingThunder: Anything similar but free?
I useed something like spinrite once before. Told me the drive I had at the time was impending doom.

2 months later, bang dead.

Click to expand...

Theo,

I don't know. If you passed WD Diags like you did, I wouldn't be too concerned. This Raptor fails WD Diags almost immediately but Sprinrite corrected the errors (so far). The Raptor has a few bad sectors that Spinrite isolated from being written to at the 74% range. They now show as "immoveable" in Windows defrag so I know it worked. WD Diags apparently doesn't know that and still fails but Sprinrite says it's now ok. WD Diags isn't too forgiving, it either sees a 100% good drive or it doesn't. If it didn't see anything to "fix," I would carry on.

I'm not taking that for granted and have been prepared for some time but so far all is well. My drives have random activity from time to time and that's normal. It's not unusual for your OS to be running commands in the background.

Type eventvwr.msc in your "Run" window. That sometimes gives you a clue of a potential problem. Look for any "Disk" "ftdisk" or "NTFS" errors. They are also clues of problems.

You can grab one of the linux distros that run on a flash drive, boot to that and then run a long smartctl test on it. I personally find it to be miles ahead of any freeware Windows utility.