A. I usually use the hard disk drive manufacturer's diganostics to check drives. They may also repair them. Most can also be used to completely wipe a hard disk to cure viruses and master boot record/partition problems.
Hitachi (Also bought IBM's hard disk drive drive business some time ago.)
Maxtor Powermax (bought Quantum)
Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition
Western Digital DLG Diagnostic. WD's Data Lifeguard Tools V. 11.0 are also useful; e.g., the drive copy utility can be used to clone an old drive to a new one.
