I think what you're asking for already exists in the form of a disk
utility by Gibson Research called "SpinRite" and has existed for at
least 20 years. I used to use it religiously in the mid-80's but let my
version lapse in the 90's. When I started having drive troubles a few
years ago I bought a new copy. Unfortunately, it didn't help me at the
time since the problem was a failing motherboard IDE channel and
SpinRite is designed to detect surface defects and head positioning
failures or anything else that causes a weak read/write signal. But
this post serves to remind me that I should run it again to check the
health of the drive. Be aware that it can sometimes run for hours and
hours. When trying to do data recovery on a bad spot it will read the
same spot hundreds of times to build a probability profile for
individual bits.
You can find it here: <http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm>
GRC is also known for its internet security vulnerability checkup
routine called "Shields UP!" All you have to do is go to this page and
run it (near the bottom) and it will attempt to hack into your system
and give you a report on whether you're vulnerable or not.
<https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2>
Chuck Norcutt
Tim Hughes wrote:
> Here is an interesting discussion on hard disk drive longevity, with
> more links.
>
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2099467,00.asp?kc=EWEWEMNL030207EP34A
>
>
> I know people here often use there HD for longish term storage, so
> this is interesting if not very definitive.
>
> Clearly there are a few early signs of disk failure from increased
> read etry rates but unfortunately this is not reported normally in
> anyway on consumer gear. It seems that somebody could fairly easily
> write some utilities to give you an alert when at least that starts
> to happen. Good addon for Norton Utilities or similar HD utils.
>
> Tim Hughes
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