Hard drive scanner that works in windows?

Fort1tude

Ive been building a flash drive full of utilities for PC testing as I am my families Computer specialist. I was wondering if anyone knows of any HDD scanners that work from within windows, Ive got one that works from a floppy but I am trying to consolidate everything to a flash drive.

When I say HDD scanner I mean one that scans for bad sectors and mechanical faults and whatnot, not a virus scanner.

robaal

I recommend downloading/making Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. It's basically a liveCD based on Windows XP, with utilities that let you do most stuff; just make sure to update antivirus/malware definitions before burning and make sure the expiration date is disabled in plugins-> "Joshuas-WinPE-PreLogon Config" (all done through the UBCD4Win PE Builder app).


If you don't want that then you could use HDTune, that can check a drive for bad sectors (I don't think it tries to fix them in any way though) and also test the drive's speed and display SMART info.
You could also just use chkdsk (start->run->"cmd"->"chkdsk <partition letter>: /r"), though a scan for bad sectors of the OS partition will require a restart - it will be done before the system loads. OTOH if you boot from a liveCD it can be done like a scan of any other, non-OS, partition.

Fort1tude

Yea I know about chkdsk, Ill just use the bootable floppy that has a scanner on it. Like I said, Im trying to just consolidate all my utilities to one USB drive. Thanks though.