[bOOzo]

I put my old 40 gig IBM harddrive back in my computer as a slave disk.
I replaced it with a new harddrive about a year ago because it was acting weird.
But now I put it back in and I updated the firmware using Apples Hard Disk update 1.0, which is said to give it a longer life.
But I'm afraid that it's already broken, so I don't want to put stuff on it and then find out that I can't access those files later on..
So what is the best way to test a hard drive to see if it is in fact broken?

Btw, the problems I had that caused my to replace it was that it made loud crackling noises and OS X was performing badly on it. But I hope that I might be able to store files on it.

[The Placid Casual]

I am sure something like Disk Warrior, Drive 10 or Tech Tools Pro would do the job in the short term...

It will check all the sectors and make sure it reads and writes correctly, however it will give you no idea as to the possible longevity of the disk...

I would recommend running it in a machine for a while perhaps as a 'mirror' of the main drive, and making sure everything is backed up all the time...!

If you still here the cracking sounds, and get bad performance you know it is probably a duffer...

However, I will say that IBM drives are renowned for their 'noises'...I had a deskstar in a dual 867 Powermac, and it too clunked and clicked its way along. I investigated it, and was told it was 'normal'...

I think the only way to be sure it to use it, and see what happens...

[reader50]

When my factory 10GB failed, it was very erratic. It would work ok for a week at a time, then have a bad day with multiple errors.

What I did was install a basic gaming OS install, and put all my games over there. Then boot from that drive to play. It got plenty of daily use, data loading, game saving, but all the data could be lost without harm if the drive failed.

Within a month I was sure it was an intermittent failure, but I went on using it. I wanted the drive to fail totally before sending it in under warranty, so they would have no chance of rejecting it ... because it tested ok on the day they tested it.

[jessejlt]

If the drive is S.M.A.R.T. capable, than I'm sure it's onboard diagnostic is sufficient enough to tell you if it's close to failure. SMART Isn't real good for diagnosing or even identifying bad sector / regions, but it's pretty good at detecting complete failure. Of course, it goes w/o saying, make sure you have up-to-date backups :-)
jesse ;-)

[bOOzo]

I tried running FWB DriveTest, but it wasn't very useful in this case.
I guess I'll use the HD for storage of things that I already have on CD and see how it works, hopefully I can use it without any problems.