Recently my five years old hard disk started to halt intermittently and was causing so many problems when I tried to copy files from this disk to a portable USB disk. When such things happen that most common reason is the faulty data cables, accumulation of dust inside the PC or the worn out power supply (SMPS) that is not able to supply enough power to the attached components. On a much severe scale, the problem could also be with the motherboard or the hard disk itself. In the latter case, you can use the Macrorit Disk Scanner to check your hard disks for any read/write errors caused due to physical damage.
Macrorit Disk Scanner can scan your hard disks (or other types of the storage disks) for bad sectors or any other errors causing read/write problems. In order to scan a disk you have to select it from the drop-down menu and then click on the Start Now button. This will start the scanning right away. The program suggests that it will work better if you close down all the other programs like the web browsers, media players, and such. Also do not try to perform any file operations during the scan (for example, do not copy large files from or to the disk being scanned). The good sectors are shown in the green color while the bad sectors are assigned the red color.
By default the Macrorit Disk Scanner scans the whole disk from the first byte to the last. But if you do not want to scan the whole disk, then before starting the scan, you can click on the Scan area button in the toolbar. This lets you select a smaller portion of the hard disk that you can much quicker as compared to scanning the whole disk. In either case, the log of the scan is saved in the local hard disk in the same folder as the Macrorit Disk Scanner is installed.
Conclusion: Macrorit Disk Scanner can be useful to determine if your hard disk drive has any bad sectors or is suffering from some other physical damage. It works very fast and supports all types of storage disks.
You can download Macrorit Disk Scanner from http://macrorit.com/disk-surface-test/disk-surface-test.html.