Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
I recently added a Seagate 400Gb SATA drive to my system, and it has been behaving strangely since I put it in. for one thing, the BIOS S.M.A.R.T. came up with a warning the last time I booted with it enabled, saying that I should backup my data and replace the disk (!).
I still have not made any irreversible data transfers to this drive, and I have some time yet to take it back, but I'd like to know for sure that it needs it, or at least have some reasonable evidence of failure.
What is a good program out there that exercises a disk to give some assurance of errors or lack thereof?
If the drive supports SMART, smartctl should be able to test it and display the diagnostics. I'd try to get a replacement before the warranty expires.