External HDD scanning software.

FatCat37

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Jul 10, 2013
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A while back I purchased a "HP Pocket Media Drive" model no. PD5000x. It worked fine for 2 years then after some time it began developing this issue were if i was requesting large amounts of data off of it would on ocation start clicking and whirring then drop out of sight on the PC and continue its cycle of *click* then bring the disk back up to speed then *click* again. From this point on this will be referred to as C.W. Usually all i had to do was unplug the drive and plug it back in and it would work fine. But over months of having this problem, the C.W. problem became more and more frequent. Until one day i couldn't access anything and I assumed it to be dead. Fast forward 3-4 years and a new computer. I decided to try it again This time however there was no C.W. problem. Since it had been so long I had no need for the files on it so I went ahead and formatted it but Im still concerned the C.W. problem might rear its ugly head. Do you think you could recommend some sort of tool or program to scan my hard drive for issues such bad sectors or whatever different thing can go wrong? It would be much appreciated.:)
 

Dr_JRE

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Aug 12, 2012
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Try running chkdsk /r to see if the drive can be repaired.
(Start -> type CMD and press [Enter] -> type chkdsk /r and press [Enter])

You can use SpeedFan to read the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status.
(This will tell you what is broken about the drive, but there isn't much you can do about a failing drive other than recover the data to replace it.)
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

To recover lost data:
http://www.pandorarecovery.com/

or
http://www.sysresccd.org/
 

Dr_JRE

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Aug 12, 2012
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Yes. After doing some digging, I see that the drives are manufactured by Seagate and thus, SeaTools is the recommended utility to check the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status.

The DOS version is more accurate and provides a few nice features.
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-dos-master/
 

FatCat37

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Jul 10, 2013
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Thank you guys very much it is much appreciated. :)