Windows Surface Scanner is a free but powerful software which quickly scan your hard drives and let you know if there are any sector errors. This free utility takes a look at your hard drives and ferrets out any physical errors it finds, so you know what might be causing random crashes or system flakiness. This software will read each sector of a physical drive that is currently mounted on an XP, Vista, or Windows 7 operating system.
How to use it:-
1. Press the ‘Mount’ button. That will query your system for all physical
Drives currently mounted. Once found a list will be presented to you with check
boxes next to each drive. You may only choose on drive at a time to scan.
2. Use the check boxes to the left of the drive to indicate which drive
you wish to have the software scan. One again, only one drive may be
scanned at a time.
3. Press the ‘Scan’ button. This will start the surface scan of the
currently selected drive. As the scan progresses the progress bar will move
forward and a percent indicator above the progress bar will be incremented.
A ‘Sector’ counter will be incremented to give you an indication that the
software is indeed scanning the surface of your drive. In addition there is a
‘Time’ indicator that will give you an estimate as to the time remaining for the
current scan. This time can fluctuate if there are several or just a few bad
sectors on the drive.
Lastly, there is an ‘Error’ indicator. This indicator will increment every time
the software encounters a bad sector.
