doing a full surface scan?

[dragon2611]

I have a usb harddrive that keeps locking up my pc. I tryed copying some files to it on my mac mini and while it did copy it was going rather slow.

Im wandering if the drive has had it, but since i can't use it with my PC without it locking up is there a way to get the mac to do a surface scan and check for bad sectors on the disk.

 

[pianoman]

i don't think Macs can do surface scans like Windows does. you could run Disk Utility and check for errors but it sounds like wiping the drive clean and starting fresh would solve your issues.

 

[sushi]

If you really want to check out a HD, I would recommend using Spin Rite as it works very well.

Only hitch is that you need a PC to run it.

One of these days I am going to try it with Parallels and with Boot Camp to see if it will work there as well, but my guess is that it will not.

 

[dragon2611]

If you really want to check out a HD, I would recommend using Spin Rite as it works very well.

Only hitch is that you need a PC to run it.

One of these days I am going to try it with Parallels and with Boot Camp to see if it will work there as well, but my guess is that it will not.

I have the PC but i might have to try and get hold of a convertor to connect the drive to the ide port first (its a 2.5" drive) as it just crashes system on usb

i find it strange that macs cannot do a surface scan, don't mac harddrives get bad sectors then

 

[sushi]

I have the PC but i might have to try and get hold of a convertor to connect the drive to the ide port first (its a 2.5" drive) as it just crashes system on usb

i find it strange that macs cannot do a surface scan, don't mac harddrives get bad sectors then

Spin Rite uses FreeDOS and boots from a floppy disc or CD.

So you may be able to use it directly for your USB drive. I am using it right now to condition a 40GB 2.5 inch HD that I will be using for some critical data in the future. IDE is much faster than USB, so if you can get a converter it might be worth it time wise.

Spin Rite is the only program that I know of that checks and tests your HD at the level that it does. Well worth the $ if you ask me as it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

 

[dragon2611]

Spin Rite uses FreeDOS and boots from a floppy disc or CD.

So you may be able to use it directly for your USB drive. I am using it right now to condition a 40GB 2.5 inch HD that I will be using for some critical data in the future. IDE is much faster than USB, so if you can get a converter it might be worth it time wise.

Spin Rite is the only program that I know of that checks and tests your HD at the level that it does. Well worth the $ if you ask me as it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

I tryed if i try to select the usb drive it just locks up the system.

its either the drive or my motherboard in the PC.

EDIT:

I spose i could try it on my macbook, not sure if it would run spinrite.

Pity most of the games require pc's really, yes i know new intel macs can boot windows, but it would cost me a fortune to get a mac with the equiv spec of my desktop pc.