Use the manufacturer's diagnostic software, they all have their own.
Simply go to the website and click support, look for diagnostic hard
drive software.  Most of them require that you extract the files to a
bootable cd or floppy disk and run the test outside linux or windows.

If the hard drive is in warranty and it fails the test just give them
a call, they will give you an RMA number.

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows@usa.net> wrote:
> From: Mark Phillips <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz>
>> I have an older hard drive (WD1200VE - 120 GB) However, I would like
>> to test it (thoroughly, whatever that means) to see if it has any
>> problems before I use it as a backup drive.
>
> If you don't care about the data on the disk, plug it in, then in an xterm or
> konsole or screen session, run "badblocks -s -w -o badblocks.out /dev/sdd1",
> replacing sdd1 with whatever disk and partition# the drive shows up as.
> This'll do a destructive read/write test on all sectors of the device.  It
> will tie up the device, but all the other devices will remain usable, since
> Linux does multitasking pretty well in most cases.  You could add "-p 1" to
> make it do 2 passes if you really want to check it out.  If it does find bad
> blocks, you can pass the badblocks.out file to mke2fs's -l option, which could
> keep things usable.
>
> Make sure you get the device name right.
>
> --
> Matt G / Dances With Crows
> The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
> There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
>
>
>
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