Do I have a bad drive?

I was getting Cyclic redundancy errors when I tried to copy a file to
another drive.

One time I got a disk error that I don't remember what it was but
after I rebooted the two drives were gone. It is a 160G Western
Digital drive formatted with two partitions. I was using Acronis for
a "try and decide" partition. I never used that feature so I deleted
both partitions and reformatted.

The first 75G partition formatted fine using the disk manager. The
second partition format never gave an error but hung at 50%.

I installed Partition Magic and deleted all the partitions and
reformatted two 75G partitions and everything went fine.

What is a good way to test the drive to make sure it is good?
I tried the built in tests that Partition magic preformed, but the
tests took less than 30 seconds.

It sounds like it. Download the hard drive manufacturer's disk utility and
test the drive. If it fails the utility will provide warranty info and will
usually generate an RMA if the drive is still under warranty.

"Terry" <kilowatt@charter.net> wrote in message
news:cj5kp3trf9iekl2b9irk1e35uumlibj1va@4ax.com...
> Do I have a bad drive?
>
> I was getting Cyclic redundancy errors when I tried to copy a file to
> another drive.
>
> One time I got a disk error that I don't remember what it was but
> after I rebooted the two drives were gone. It is a 160G Western
> Digital drive formatted with two partitions. I was using Acronis for
> a "try and decide" partition. I never used that feature so I deleted
> both partitions and reformatted.
>
> The first 75G partition formatted fine using the disk manager. The
> second partition format never gave an error but hung at 50%.
>
> I installed Partition Magic and deleted all the partitions and
> reformatted two 75G partitions and everything went fine.
>
> What is a good way to test the drive to make sure it is good?
> I tried the built in tests that Partition magic preformed, but the
> tests took less than 30 seconds.
>

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:12:53 -0500, Terry wrote:

> Do I have a bad drive?
>
....
>
> What is a good way to test the drive to make sure it is good?

Download and run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic from here:
http://support.wdc.com/download/

Terry wrote:
> Do I have a bad drive?
>
> I was getting Cyclic redundancy errors when I tried to copy a file to
> another drive.

Usually if you get CRCs on a hard drive, it's a goner. When the drive
encounters errors, it marks the track as bad and maps further access to a
spare track. Only when the spares are exhausted will the drive report a CRC.
This means that you already have 8, 10, 50... bad tracks.

On Jan 25, 12:45 pm, Gotde T Shirt <m...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:12:53 -0500, Terry wrote:
> > Do I have a bad drive?
>
> ...
>
> > What is a good way to test the drive to make sure it is good?
>
> Download and run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic from here:http://support.wdc.com/download/

Hi,
Thanks
I downloaded the Lifeguard Diagnostic but I can't find a disk test.
I have 2 WD160 drives and one of them is the boot.

When I run the utility, it says that you can't partition your boot
drive. The drive I want to check is not the boot drive, but I can't
find an option to test it.

"Terry" <kilowatt@charter.net> wrote in message news:2008895b-bba2-43c9-87bc-efba71c733e1@s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 25, 12:45 pm, Gotde T Shirt <m...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:12:53 -0500, Terry wrote:
>> > Do I have a bad drive?
>>
>> ...
>>
>> > What is a good way to test the drive to make sure it is good?
>>
>> Download and run the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic from here:http://support.wdc.com/download/
>
> Hi,
> Thanks
> I downloaded the Lifeguard Diagnostic but I can't find a disk test.
> I have 2 WD160 drives and one of them is the boot.
>
> When I run the utility, it says that you can't partition your boot
> drive. The drive I want to check is not the boot drive, but I can't
> find an option to test it.

Look right under the picture that says DATA LIFEGUARD TOOLS.
SEE: Highlight a physical drive. Click [ here] to run tests. DO NOT
choose write zeros to drive. choose only the quick test and full test.

The correct file from Western Digital is {WinDLG.zip}.