vista disk check program not reliable?

i have only used my m1330 (bought from dell outlet, refurbished) for two weeks. last week i found 4 kb bad sectors by the disk check (with attempting to recover bad sector checked) included in vista.
today i tried to contact dell (by online chat) and they told me that the disk check program by windows is not reliable; then they told me to use the diagnostics tool in the m1330 to check HD again (press F12 when booting and choose diagnostics option). Now I am checking it using the dell diagnostics tool, it has run for >4 hours!!!

Is the check disk program in vista really unreliable?

 

finished dell diagnostics, says every test pass? no bad sectors?

anybody has similar experience with hard disk?

thanks

 

Dell doesn't know how to check for errors, their program has numerous times not worked for me.

Anyway, the Windows tool has been used for probably a decade...its the same CHKDSK code that was running in XP, 2000, NT, 98, and 95 AFAIK.

Download and run HDTune (free version, if there even is a pay version) and run a full health scan.

If it does not work, call Dell and complain.

 

thanks for your suggestion!

i just tried HDTune Pro trial version, it could not recognize my hard disk! no health information, it says: health status N/A! i tried on another older computer, it worked fine!

very strange?

 

I had the same problem. The free version of HD Tune wasn't able to read the SMART info (HD Tune calls it "health") from the Seagate drive in my M1530. Most hard drive manufacturers have free software that will check the SMART status of your drive and run diagnostics to check for bad sectors.

 

i used active smart (a shareware), it can read the smart info of my HD (toshiba 250G)
it says everything is ok