Windows 7 - Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool For Toshiba

Hi All

Can anyone recommend a hard drive diagnostic
tool for Toshiba MK6465GSX.

Have done some research on this topic and from
my understanding, there is no tool released by the
manufacturer which actually works - the story is
that Toshiba tests come back as failed even if the drive
is OK.

I currently have no problem with my drive but am
interested to know in case of any future problem.
Therefore a solution is not urgent.

I also looked at DOS Seatools however it seems
that the DOS version can only be used on Seagate and
Maxtor drives.

So if anyone has any suggestion on a bootable diagnostic
tool for my make of drive please post.

Ty in advance for replies

I have used Hitachi drive fitness test. It seems to work with all brands of hard drives.
Downloads
Not as good as a manufacturer's specific diagnostic, but good enough.

I have also heard that Hiren's Boot CD has a Toshiba diagnostic on it, but it is probably the same tool you used.

Thanks for the reply TVeblen

Yes I think it is the Seatools on the Hirens boot disk.
There are other hard drive diagnostic tools on the Hirens
disk also, but from past experience I dont believe they
work as usually they will bring up a FAIL even if the disk
is known to be working.

I assume you have answered as either you own a Toshiba
or do systems maintenance - would this be correct?

If this is the case, I also assume that you have used
the Hitachi fitness test and found it to be reliable?

I have to say that I find it very dissappointing that
Toshiba dont release a drive diagnostic which actually works.
Think I may contact them and ask why this would be when
most other drive manufacturers release a test tool.

My old machine is a Satellite A200 which I am about to crack open
and clean the heat sink, reapply paste etc... due to an overheating issue.
I guess this was to expected- it is 5 year old after all.
Still - even with this model there was a lack of diagnostic tool.
The drives (2 x 200GB) in the A200 are Toshiba labelled but
I'm 99% sure that these were manufactured by Fujitsu.
There is a Fujitsu diag. tool for Toshiba drives but I can't remember
if either a) it didn't work or b) it was not compatible to use with
the drive model.

I seemed to go around in circles looking for the right
answer with both the old and new drives for Tosh.

Again - ty for the reply and in advance to the questions I've
asked in this post if you happen to get this message
Cheers -

Edit: Hirens does also have a Toshiba tool and yes I have tried it
and no it doesn't work - it will only FAIL drives even if there
is not a problem.

I have three hard drive diagnostic tests I use here to test drives for systems I repair or build from discarded parts, WD, Seagate, and Hitachi. I use the Hitachi on on all drives that are not WD, Seagate, or Maxtor.

Toshiba probably does not produce their own diagnostic tool for the reason you've mentioned: they do not manufacture hard drives, only sell the Fujitsu manufactured ones branded Toshiba. Fujitsu makes drives for other companies too, so any diagnostic tool that they would use will work on all the different branded drives they make.

Windows has it's own hard disk diagnostic: ChkDsk Disk Check . Have you run this yet? What does it give for results?

But I am curious about your pre-diagnoses: that these drives are know good and it is the diagnostic that must be failing. Why bother testing them at all? If you are just shopping for a test that will give you the "right" answer then that is not a test at all.

Hard drives do not always fail spectacularly. Sometimes the death is slow and painful. The danger to most people is loss of data. The purpose of the diagnostic test is to try and flag drives that have started showing signs of potential failure so the user can have time to back up data or upgrade the drive before disaster strikes. It would not make much sense to have a diagnostic that only tells you that a dead drive is dead.

Most of these diagnostic tests are very rudimentary. Collect and analyze SMART data, check each sector for read/write capability. If a sector fails it is marked as bad in the file system. Almost all hard drives will have at least one bad sector. There is redundancy built in to allow a drive to continue to function even with many bad sectors. But as the level of bad sectors increases the likelihood of a larger mechanical problem occurring becomes more evident. One day this drive will just stop working. But which day?

Thankyou again for the reply

I do know about the chkdsk command and have run this
on several occasions if ever I felt the need.

As per answering your question about pre diagnosis, I know the
drive is good on my new machine because it is new. As I said
previously, I don't currently have an issue with a hard drive on either
machine, but when I started using the new laptop I was searching
for a tool which would do hard drive diagnostics in case I ever
needed it and therefore tested some of the previously mentioned tools
on the new machine just to establish if they would work.

What I'm trying to say is that all the tools I used would return
a FAIL result on a brand new drive which I find to be highly unlikely.
If I test a brand new drive just for the purpose of finding a tool which
will work with it in case of need for future use, then I expect a PASS result.
Apologies for any wording which may have caused confusion.

I will take your advice and give the Hitachi test a go- I could be wrong
but I have a feeling it is also on Hirens disk and I may have overlooked
giving this one a go. In any case I'll find the download

Cheers

Edit: I forgot to mention that although it may seem a little backward,
and as I said previously you would expect a new hard drive to output
a PASS result, I believe that if I were building a system for a client
I would want to run this sort of test as a pre handover measure. This
is not the case in my situation but having the right tool for testing readily
available I think I would make a priority. For example, can you imagine
filling a contract to build 100 systems, ordering the drives for those systems
and then releasing them to the client only to find that the manufacturer
supplied you with the bad batch from the production line? I dont think that would be too good for business somehow.

As I said before, I would expect a pass result on a
new drive but I wouldn't rely upon it.

It is not at all uncommon for a brand new hard drive to be defective. The manufacturing industry considers a 2% to 5% defect rate to be "excellent".

As they taught us in my Production Management class in college, it is more cost effective to plan to replace 5% on the inventory then to spend the capital and man-hours to achieve near perfection.

Wow - I didn't realise the statistic was that high.

I guess it's a bit of a juggle then, either way it's going to
cost labour hours either by way of pre release testing of systems
to the client or post release on a large scale project when
the client wants a replacement part. Using your statistics
that's gonna be 2 to 5 machines in every hundred.

I'm not trying to stir you up or anything TVeblem, but now
you may understand why I personally would be looking for
the right diagnostic tool as I think I would take the approach
of testing prior to release. You sound more experienced than myself for sure,
but I think that's the way I'd go, just my opinion.

I'll give the Hitachi a go as stated previously.
Thanks for all your advice - I'll mark this thread as solved.

Cheers mate

No, no man. Stir me up. That is what makes this interesting. Otherwise I tend to fall asleep in my chair!

What I am dishing out here is the conventional wisdom. I didn't think it up. You just keep hearing it over and over so it must be true. Sometimes it takes someone like you to come along and say "wait a minute...", and knock people out of their complacency.

It does not please me when these diagnostic test come back with simple yes or no answers. I, most likely like you, want to see what is going on. What are the problems? What failed? Why? In your case you want to be looking for a program that not only diagnoses the hard drive but gives you visual results. How many sectors are bad? What is the SMART data? Please let us know if you find one.

One other thing about bad sectors: sometimes these errors can be corrected by a complete wipe (writing all zeros or ones to the entire drive, then reinitializing it (formatting). If the bad sectors remain afterward they are truly bad and not just some file system glitch.

Did you look here:

Software Utilities

Ok!! Lets keep this post going then and see what others have to say- lol

You are most certainly right TV, without controversy we would all
just agree on everyhting, nothing would be solved, no better ideas
would come along and what a boring world this would most certainly be!

Thankyou for the encouragement to speak out- even if it may make
me seem very naive relative to all things computer. I don't like the taste
of foot in mouth or humble pie but I will also admit to being wrong.

I understand about the writing of the ones and zeros, it surpises me
that as I read this post, it was only today that I learned even if
you wrote over the disk with the afformentioned ones and zeros
several times, that the data can still be recovered using computer forensic
techniques. Remind to learn this trade cause theres mega bucks involved
from what I hear.

Thanks to sonic (hope you dont mind me abbreviating your moniker just a little).
Yes I have tried the tool you have linked out to, This is one that
will NOT work and as stated previously that surprises me seeing as
though it is available from Toshiba themselves.

Thanks for the responses again all- I'll keep searching
for other options also and post back if at all worthwhile.

PS: Can posts be re- opened?