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The diagnostic that ignatzatsonic linked is for IDE drives only, although I am not quite sure why it wouldn't run for a SATA drive. Probably because it checks much more than just the disks.
I have yet to find a Toshiba HDD DOS (floppy) utility for Fujitsu-branded drives. The drive in question is a 2.5-inch laptop drive, 44-pin PATA. This 60GB drive is used in a single-board computer (SBC) in a CPCI chassis. Converting to a more modern SATA hard drive is not an option.
The Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (DFT) on a floppy disk will test this drive, but won't allow erasure. The Fujitsu utility V6.8 or V7.0 does not even find the drive, claiming that no drive is connected. Amazing, since the Hitachi and Western Digital utilities find the drive, as does Sprinrite. For testing, It's not in an external USB box, which sometimes cause problems with hard drive diagnostic software. It's connected to the motherboard's ATA connector through a 40-to-44 adapter. The test computer's setup doesn't have a problem recognizing the hard drive.
I stopped buying any hard drives but Hitachi years ago. Whenever a new hard drive comes in the door, I test it with Hitachi DFT. After that, I run Spinrite 6 on the empty, unformatted drive. This takes a VERY long time. Spinrite hasn't been updated for ages, and was not written when 1, 2, or even 3 TB drives were common. However, if the new drive passes DFT + Spinrite, it will no doubt have a very long service life.
I stopped buying Seagate hard drives years ago because when my Seagate hard drive failed immediately after purchase (at full retail price), Seagate (eventually) sent me a used, supposedly refurbished hard drive. I didn't pay for a used hard drive and I had not anticipated wasting extra money shipping a brand-new-but-very-dead drive back to Seagate.
I stopped buying Western Digital hard drives because they did not honor their warranty based on spurious grounds - they said I had not purchased it from an authorized WD dealer. Huh? Central Computers is not an authorized dealer?
So far, only Hitachi has worked for me, and I don't put a new drive in a computer unless it has passed extensive testing. If I had to build 100 computers, it would take at least a month just to test all the new hard drives.
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