Hard Disk Drive Read/Write Testing Application

[Anna Marchetti]

So I've got a few drives, probably bad, but I'm not 100% sure. I want to do better than just a chkdsk by having a utility that writes data and then tests the disk by trying to read it back and verifying that the data is still valid and free of errors. I've been Googling around and all I can see to find are benchmarking apps.

Anyone have any suggestions of an application that would be able to do the sort of testing I need for hard drives?

~Anna~
"When life gives you lemons, you clone those lemons and make SUPER lemons."

 

[Alabalcho]

Most of drive manufacturers (Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba) offer free tools on their websites just for that, in many cases in the form of bootable CD image.