That was enough for us-we left it untouched. The Advanced Tests feature stern warnings that you can lose data or render your drive unusable should you proceed. We later learned from the Help file that the test can take up to four hours and works in 10-percent increments.

We eventually had to abort the test, which caused the program to freeze and shut down. The Long Drive Self Test, however, never progressed past a certain point. The Short Drive Self Test had the same outcome. The program quickly scanned our drive, and it passed the test, but that's all we know SeaTools doesn't display scan results. We went through each test that the program offered, starting with the S.M.A.R.T.

It detected our only drive, along with its serial number, model number, firmware revision, and drive and test status. SeaTools' user interface is extremely stark: basic menu items line the top of a plain window, with detected drives are listed below. You'll have to take its word that it's working, though, because it doesn't offer any scan details. Hard disk maker Seagate's SeaTools for Windows scans your disk drives for driver corruption, broken master boot records, viruses and Trojans, spyware, and any hardware conflicts.

Seagate seatools featurs