Thorough Surface Scan Utilities?

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Back when I used to run Windows ME, I used to have a lot of hard drive problems (bad clusters on the hard disk.) When I'd run Windows, I would do the "thorough" surface scan disk option many times, but it would NEVER detect the bad sectors. After my computer would crash 4 or 5 times in a row on start up, windows would automatically send you in to a strange blue screen/program where it would use an odd looking surface scan disk program to systematically check every bit on the hard drive for bad sectors (it would actually give you a read out of every bit it was testing). The thing I loved the most about this program is that it would ALWAYS catch nearly every single bad cluster on the hard drive (sure it used to take 3 hours to run the scan disk on an 8GB drive, but it was damn worth it). However I have no idea how I could have gotten to that program manually as it was never part of the normal "surface scan disk" program in Windows.

Now I have Windows XP, and the Windows XP "Thorough Surface Disk Scan" is absolute garbage. It never catches anything. What I would give for a program like the one my computer used to use back under Windows 98 and ME.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what program that was that Windows used to use? And is there an equivalent in Windows XP that can test every bit on the hard drive (or at least do a thorough job like the old one)? :confused:
 
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