How To Check Brand New Hard Disk

Hello friends,

I got some doubt and need your help to find out some solution:

I want to buy an additional HD for my desktop C2Q.

My friend is giving me 1500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 32MB cache HD on just half of the actual (market) price.

He said he brought it and somehow his PC was not supporting this HD and he need money and wants to sale it.

I’m little bit confused and not sure. Sometime thinking that there might be some problem and he just wants to get rid of this.

I want to know how I can check if this HD is new and was not used at all.
Or if he used it then how I can check that HD is 100% ok and reliable and it will not give me any problem.

At last I will say that my friend is giving me as a brand new HD but for some reason I cannot take any risk and want to be sure before I take it and use it.

NOW:

>>> i only want to know if this hard disk is 100% free of all fault/errors.

>>> i was reading in another forum that seagate 1.5tb & 2tb drive are having some problems and its freezing - seagate later release some firmware updates to fix this problem.

Need your help. Thanks.

Plug it in and use HD tune to do a full scan.

As above, seagate also provide their own set of tools for testing drives http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/

I would plug it in to your PC, and run HD tune - link here: http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe, and run a full scan (error scan)*as stated by blaineoliver. Also check the health section, which assesses your hard disks state from information given.

Finally you could give speed fan a try (http://www.almico.com/speedfan438.exe), and in the SMART section it gives you more details like the ones in the HD tune's health sections.

There is always a risk that even a brand new disk will fail after a short time, and checking it before you buy it won't necessarily detect that. Part of the purchase price from a retailer covers the cost of the warranty - so if it does fail, you can change it. If you buy from a friend, you are losing that protection (and if it does go wrong, will it threaten your friendship?)

Certainly use the tools to give the disk a thjrough test, but remember that a bargain can come with a potential sting in the tail.

The fact that you are posting this at all (and the tone of the post) suggests to me that you have some doubts about the deal.