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Diagnostic Software con't

Active SMART will notify you if an attribute line changes on a later scan, so you can track your drive's health over time.

The program has a variety of scanning options, but the default will scan your drives during Windows startup, and every hour after. The actual scanning process is almost instantaneous.

Active SMART is trialware, with a 21-day period. Consider this a good basic tool for diagnosing the physical status of your drives. While it does not actually do anything that DiskCheckup does not, its automatic scans, notification options and easy to read graphs make for a more useful program.

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HD Workbench by DIY Data Recovery is another comprehensive trialware program you may also want to look into.


Lastly, there is Symantec's popular Norton Utilities software suite includes Disc Doctor, which analyzes partition tables and data on the disk for errors. It actually uses Windows XP's integrated CHKDSK program to do the scanning, but it gives you much more verbose information on what errors were found and fixed. It's certainly worth running for a quick test of your data's integrity on the hard drive.

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Fixing bad sectors - the last resort

If your drive has become unusable due to data errors and none of the above utilities seem to help, there are a couple of possibilities. One: your drive has mechanical errors, and will shortly only be useful as a fridge magnet , or two: you have a virus or major software error that is causing 'soft' bad sectors to be created. In either case, your first step should be to get as much of your data off the drive as possible. See PCStats Guide to backing up data and data recovery for help on how to do that.

Once you have salvaged your data, you can attempt to 'zero-fill' the drive, by writing 0 values to every single sector of the drive. This can accomplish what normal formats and partitioning can't, since it erases the entire disk - so best to double check that all your data is off the drive before starting this procedure.

If your errors were being caused by software problems, this may well fix the disk, and allow you to reinstall you OS back onto it freshly, or put it back in service for storing data. On the other hand, if your drive has mechanical problems, this will not help.

The best way to 'zero-fill' your drive is by using the option within the diagnostic software made by your hard disk manufacturer. Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics can also carry out this operation on all drives, though since this is a Windows program you will have to move the afflicted hard drive to another computer if it is a system drive.

In conclusion, be aware of the status of your hard drives. You know better than anyone how your computer system normally operates, so when you start seeing (or hearing) strange errors and inconsistencies, it's time to think about protecting your data. While there is no way for a user to save a mechanically failing hard disk, it is easy to save your precious data if you act fast. Better yet, back it all up now, so you don't have to worry about that curl of smoke that may be emanating from your drive next week.

We recommend that you back up your essential data frequently, and take a little time each week or month to test your hard disks for errors.