How can I tell when my Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 is malfunctioning?
I can use disc utility to tell me if its corrupt but thats not the same as a drive fault. A good drive can be corrupt, run a fix and it will be fine again.
How can I do a drive read (and maybe write) test to determine if the hardware itself is faulty?
I looked at the Hitachi hard drive check downloads page and downloaded the CD image but my Macbook Pro (Unibody c2d 2.8) will not boot from it. Little wonder as it only contains very un-mac-friendly looking dos and com files.
http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/
I then found the macfaq section which basically says use the checking tool on diskutility. But this does not tell me if the hardware is malfunctioning. It only tells me whether the filesystem is corrupt.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/macfaqs.htm (Go to "How do I test my Drive for errors")
With my external seagate drive there is a tool that does read (and possibly write) testing and then gives you a pass or fail. If it fails, you return the drive and they give you a new one.
I can use disc utility to tell me if its corrupt but thats not the same as a drive fault. A good drive can be corrupt, run a fix and it will be fine again.
How can I do a drive read (and maybe write) test to determine if the hardware itself is faulty?
I looked at the Hitachi hard drive check downloads page and downloaded the CD image but my Macbook Pro (Unibody c2d 2.8) will not boot from it. Little wonder as it only contains very un-mac-friendly looking dos and com files.
http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/
I then found the macfaq section which basically says use the checking tool on diskutility. But this does not tell me if the hardware is malfunctioning. It only tells me whether the filesystem is corrupt.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/macfaqs.htm (Go to "How do I test my Drive for errors")
With my external seagate drive there is a tool that does read (and possibly write) testing and then gives you a pass or fail. If it fails, you return the drive and they give you a new one.