This will only work with a seagate HDD.
You will need Seatools by seagate to do this tutorial.
Seatools is a utility brought out by seagate specifically for seagate hard drive testing. This is a useful tool when you are diagnosing a fault in your PC because it not only has a version that will run inside of your OS(eg.Windows or Linux), but has a boot-able version that you can burn to a disk and run at start-up. So say your computer has totally died and it will turn on but will not get to your OS then you can boot to the Seatools boot-able disk and run the tests to see if your hard drive is your problem.
You can use Seatools for:
- Writing zero’s
- S.M.A.R.T Testing
- Short drive self test
- Get drive information
- Updating firmware
- Short/Long tests
Writing zeros
Writing zero’s means that zero’s will be written to every part of the HDD. This tool can be useful if you had sensitive or confidential information on your HDD and you did not want anybody to be able to recover this data. Just deleting files and folders leaves traces of the information behind and it can still be recoverable, so if you write all zero’s to the disk that will mean that all the old data has been written over and make it harder to recover.
S.M.A.R.T Test
S.M.A.R.T(Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is the technology used to monitor and detect hard drive defects and malfunctions and warn you that your HDD is getting worn out and you may need to replace your hard drive or risk losing your data if your hard drive fails. S.M.A.R.T test is good to do to predict possible hard drive failure in the near future.
Short Drive Self Test
The DST(Drive self test) is a test that is built into the hard drives firmware. Because it runs the built in test that is on the seagate hard drives firmware it may be outdated and not as effective as the tests that are part of the Seatools program. In most cases this will determine if there is a failure on the disk.
Get drive information
This option will output information on the seagate hard drive that is selected such as model number, serial number, cache size, current drive temperature and other useful information. This can come in very handy when the sticker off the hard drive has been damaged some how and you can no longer read the serial number and part number when applying for a warranty repair.
Update firmware
Updating firmware is updating the program that is on the HDD.
Short/Long tests
These are probably the most useful tools that are included in Seagate’s Seatools program. The short test will pick up any major failures in your hard drive. If after the short test comes back that there are no problems and you still suspect the hard drive of being the problem then run the long test. The long test can take 4 hours plus to run though.
