Concerned about my hard disk sanity.
 

Updating my kernel corrupted grub preventing me from booting. Running the grub shell to restore the primary stage bootloader, restored bootability. It is important to note, that several months ago, I had a similar failure that corrupted the MBR.

Are there any Linux based tools to check an HD for sanity? By the latter I am not only understanding software integrity but also hardware sanity.

Thanks for any replies.

use the parted magic or system rescue cd or some other live cd to check

1 fsck
2, smartctl

read the manuals first
#man smartctl