I'm not sure if this should be in hardware or software, since it is about both, so I will give it a shot here.

I am looking for a program that will throughly check the hardware of a HDD, something like a sector-by-sector read/write (I am not interested in any file-system checking).

I have the sinking feeling one of my drives is bad. I have only had it for a week, but I have heard it making clunking noises and on at least one occasion, some software accessing it froze.

But I want to be completely sure the HDD is at fault before I send it back in for a replacement.

I am not concerned if testing will destroy the data on the disk, since I have hardly had time to put anything on it, let alone anything irreplaceable.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi MS3FGX. It sounds jinxed to me. As you know, hard drives aren't supposed to make clunking noises, and if you've only had it for a week, my best suggestion would be to return it or RMA it now to whoever you bought it from. As long as it's only been a week since you purchased it, it should be no trouble exchanging it for another. I don't know offhand of any HDD diagnostic progs, but it seems (to me anyway) that you'd be putting yourself through a whole lot of unnecessary trouble and effort. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage you, but if I were in your spot, I don't think I'd ever really trust a drive that exhibited unexpected behavior during its first week, and therefore if I were you I'd just return it now. If it does go bad, say, 6 months down the road, any attempts to exchange it are likely to be refused, so why take the risk. That's just my 2 cents, good luck with it in any case. -- J.W.

Go to your manufacturers web site and see if they have a diagnostic program. For a Maxtor drive you will be searching for the Powermax utility for Western Digital you want Lifeguard & diagnostics disk not sure about the rest those are the only two brands I have. You may also want to look at installing the smartmon tools for your distro and giving them a long test.

Unfortunately, the Maxtor PowerMax software confirmed my suspicions, the drive is on it's last legs.

The reason I didn't try this first, oddly enough, was because this drive past the exact same tests before I installed it. Just goes to show how fast hardware can deteriorate.

Yeah it sucks I had a WD 120gb that was like 5/6 weeks old die earlier this year on me, luckily it was just a few days after the last backup so I only lost a little bit of info. The replacement has been working flawlessly though for over 6 months now sometimes you just get a flaky piece of hardware even if it is brand new.