HDDChecker is a disk diagnostic tool meant for testing the health of your PlayStation 2 console's Harddisk Drive unit.
It now supports maintenance of the partitions on the disk too.
It was conceived and constructed because I didn't want to see anymore poor SCPH-20400 units being cut open, just to have the disks within them taken out for testing. >_>
Features:
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1. Detects and lists the model, serial, firmware and S.M.A.R.T. status of HDD unit 0 (Primary Master).
2. Performs a surface scan of the disk.
3. Supports 48-bit LBA disks up to 2TB.
4. Performs zero-filling of the disk.
5. With the surface scan, bad sectors found might be remappable.
Writing to a to-be-remapped sector (those hard-to-read sectors, as recorded by the disk)
may kick off the actual sector remapping process.
However, this has not been widely tested and is manufacturer-specific.
6. Checks for damage to the APA scheme and PFS partitions.
7. Optimizes the partitions on the HDD to reclaim space.
Notes/known issues/bugs:
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*Disks up to 2TB are supported. Any capacities beyond that will be truncated to 2TB.
*Do not use (usually old) disks that are not compliant with the ATA-4 specification.
Like with every other PlayStation 2 software out there that supports the ATA interface, the disk is expected to support UDMA mode 4 and S.M.A.R.T.
*If the disk's S.M.A.R.T. status is indicated to be no good (NG status), the disk is about to fail and should be replaced.
*This tool may not be able to successfully remap sectors on all drives, as there isn't an official specification on remapping sectors within the ATA specification.
If writing to a bad sector isn't sufficient to cause the disk to automatically remap it, the manufacturer's tools may have to be used instead.
*If a bad sector cannot be remapped, the disk is dying and should be replaced.
*As zeros will be written to the bad sector in an attempt to cause the disk to remap it, the data stored within the bad sector will be lost.
Do not choose to remap the sector if it contains data that cannot be lost.
Logging Feature
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As of HDDChecker v0.96, a new logging feature has been added.
4 log files will be generated:
When scanning is done:
*hdck.log
*fsck.log
When optimization is done:
*fssk.log
*hdsk.log
No log files will be generated for surface scanning or zero-filling,
as the purpose of these log files is allow what was done during the scanning and optimization operations to be explained.
If you experience problems with HDDChecker's scanning and optimization functionality, please contact the developer and provide the log files.
How to setup this software:
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Extract the main binary (HDDChecker.elf) and the lang folder (do not delete any files), and place both of them in the same place.
The only supported devices are the HDD unit, Memory Card and USB mass storage device.
Credits:
This software would not have been possible without the support of other users. Special thanks to: Berion, for the icons. Translators. krHACKen, giving reports on the S.M.A.R.T. status bug and contributing research materials.... and all users!