Shark Man

Can this actually be done? If so, what software?

The issue is I have to two old drives (one a Maxtor and the other an orginal IBM deathstar). Both seem to be in full working order.

However, the smart status on both forecasts impending doom (ok not suprising for the deathstar - but the maxtor is worse). The thing is, the system both these drives were attached to had disk access issues casued by a IDE controller problem. So obviously data did get corrupted. And I have a suspicion that the smart data may have been affected because of that.

Smart data on both disks indicates a re-allocated sector count of 1 (the lowest/worst possible value). Which seems odd - as I'd expect the drives to be totally dead if that were the case. And both drives say that, which makes it more suspicious. Even more so when I have some other Maxtors of the same age and batch in different systems with near perfect SMART logs.

What I'd like to do is clear it and reset it, and then run the disks on intensive diagnostics for a few days to see if they are indeed on their way to making shiny drink matts.

Don't say "bin them", as they are scratch drives and store no critical data. But whilst they still function I can't see any point in binning them if it was just the hard drive controller that caused the errors.

Pointers to software (preferably freeware ) that can do this would be handy...ta