[TriLUG] exhaustive disk testing

[Matt Bidwell]

Christopher L Merrill wrote:
> We _think_ we had a drive failure last week. We were getting
> random messages about disk problems at the console and loosing
> access to the drive (which was not the boot drive).  We found
> that the drive seemed to be OK after rebooting, but then after
> 30-90 minutes or so (during which we were copying off all the
> important files), we would start to see the problems again.
> However, we think we were able to recover all files without
> any corruption.
> 
> So the question is:
> What is the best way to do a long, exhaustive disk test to
> find out if the drive is really bad (and have some output
> to include in our warranty claim)?  We have a Knoppix 5.1
> disc handy.  (There is no DVD drive in this machine, so
> whatever we use must be CD bootable).
> 
> TIA!
> Chris
> 

Chris,
I like Ultimate Boot CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has a lot of the drive manufacturers own utilities
on a bootable cd, plus a bunch of other tools.

Matt