As you probably know, your hard drive is the most important and fragile component of your computer. Since it houses all your data, your system basically “lives and dies” by the health of your hard drive.
Perhaps the most important indicator in a hard drive is the S.M.A.R.T. check which is built in to virtually all models. This check is a way for your hard drive to warn you that something is wrong. The problem is a lot of systems only show S.M.A.R.T. checks at bootup, which really doesn’t do too much good. This is where Seagate’s SeaTools for Windows come into play.
SeaTools, obviously, checks Seagate drives, but also any hard drive which has S.M.A.R.T. monitoring. This makes SeaTools ideal for systems with multiple hard drives as you can check the health of each device from a single location. Additionally, you can perform non-destructive tests on drives in order to full test their health.
While there are other programs out there which do the same thing, I have found SeaTools to be just right for basic hard disk diagnostics from the convenience of Windows.
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I wonder how this compares to GRC’s SpinRite? ($80)
SeaTools is a basic checker checking integrity, structure, and sector verify, among other items. I does not, apparently, see all the various controllers out there and may not be able to run all tests on all drives. Still, for free, it does a good job.