I think that you will find that XP's Chkdsk is a cut down version of
Norton's. Run the Norton one for all the bells and whistles. It should
do a surface scan on an NTFS disk.

Orf Bartrop

John Sproule wrote:

>Thanks for the reply, Peter, and thanks for confirming what I suspected,
>that Norton's, under WinXP, is simply using the OS's Chkdsk utility.  It
>looks like the diagnostic utilities from drive manufacturers would be the
>only other readily available means of testing a drive's surface integrity.
>I'm assuming that it is no more risky running one of these on an NTFS
>formatted disk than a FAT formatted disk.  In other words, in either case,
>if the drive is failing, data may end up discarded from sectors that cannot
>be read and that the stress of running one of these utilities may rapidly
>accelerate the rate of failure of an unhealthy drive.
>
>The only alternative to Chkdsk and the manufacturer's utilities that I've
>been able to find that seems specifically designed to work with NTFS is the
>recently released update to SpinRite, now SpinRite 6.  This utility seems to
>have the features that I was looking for, and more.  Unfortunately, because
>of it's sophisticated features, it's not cheap - $89 for a first time buyer.
>I may have to just bite the bullet on that, although it seems like this
>utility is a bit of overkill for what I was wanting.
>
>John Sproule
>
>----- Abbreviated Original Message -----
>From: "Peter Shkabara" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Hard Drive Surface Scans and NTFS
>
>
>
>
>>Norton DiskDoctor relies on the CHKDSK utility of WinXP to do the
>>
>>
>checking.
>
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