Why does SeaTools say I have no hard drive?

Question

A friend of mine is having crashing problems on her PC. I downloaded SeaTools to check her hard drive for errors. I thought I would try it out on my computer to see how to use it. But it tells me "no hard drives found." What? I have two hard drives, and they are in perfect working order. Another person asked this here (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070215050626AAFIRhB) and they were given a false answer, which is very unhelpful. There appear to be an issue with getting SeaTools to detect drives. Does anyone know how I might get it to detect my hard drives?

Answer 1

SeaTools does have detection issues (Usually when your drive isn't seagate :P), I'd say use PowerMax or Data Lifeguard tools, I use them both with no problems.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/
(Powermax is on the right) I use this for all brands and sizes drives, IF you have a SATA drive, there's a 2nd tab in the drive list, so keep that in mind.
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp
(Data lifeguard for windows is on the right, also has a 2nd page for SATA drives.)
Both of these programs work on ANY brand drive, I've used them with no problems. If you decide to use the bootable floppy version, use PowerMax DOS, because LifeGuard gives errors... Save your time.

Answer 2

SeaTools will only work with Seagate brand hard drives. You need something a bit more generic than that. Go to download.com and search for a hard drive checker. Otherwise, you could just use the tools in windows. Open my computer, right click on the drive in question, choose properties, choose the tools tab, then click on check now in the check drive for errors section. It might be a good idea to defrag the drive too but don't do them at the same time. The disk check and defrag may take a long time to run, so don't plan on using the computer while it it running.

Answer 3

Never heard of seatools,try another utility.