Software for scanning HDD for hardware problems?

[ripken204]

well what if the ram is really f***ed up?

[Polarman]

Heat has a major effect on drive reliability.

Disk drives are complex electro-mechanical devices that can suffer performance degradation or failures due to a single event or a combination of events occurring over time. Environmental conditions that affect drive reliability include ambient temperature, cooling air flow rate, voltage, duty cycle, shock/vibration, and relative humidity. Fortunately, it is possible to predict certain types of failures by measuring environmental conditions. One of the worst enemies of hard disk drives is heat. Within a drive, the reliability of both the electronics and the mechanics (such as the spindle motor and actuator bearings) degrades as temperature rises. Running any disk drive at extreme temperatures for long periods of time is detrimental and can eventually lead to permanent data loss.

LAPTOPS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO HEAT!