??'s About Drive Replacement

I am currently in the process of replacing an HDD in a friend's computer in which the drive, a 40 GB Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 8 series model # 6E040L0, that failed in under 2 years of use. This is of some concern to me since I have an identical master drive and, based on what I have been reading online, Maxtor drives have recently slipped in both performance and reliability. Anyway, that is neither here or there in regards to my question, just a factoid that I feel people should be aware of before considering a Maxtor drive. Anyway here goes: after considerable research at a variety of websites and overwhelmingly positive reviews on Newegg's [Once you know, you Newegg :)] website, I settled on a Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80 GB replacement drive. My question is this: Since Maxtor's PowerMax drive utility is rebranded DrDos, I can use it to error test, burn in, and certify the drive, right? This is the drive utility I am familiar with and wish to use. Once the drive is determined not to have any problems, I will partition and format it NTFS, using Partition Magic. Western Digital may have a utility similar to PowerMax, but I'm not familiar with Western Digital's drive software. Is WD's Data Lifeguard a drive overlay or a utility that runs in Windows? I had not planned on using a drive overlay, since it is not needed for a (relatively) small 80GB HDD on a recent MoBo.

I doubt Powermax will work as it is fussy when controller cards are used, and Data Lifeguard comes in Tools, and Diagnostics form, the Tools version is to install a drive, either without a drive already installed (Boot floppy/CD ISO) and Diagnostic is obviously to test the drive for errors, it also comes in Windows form, and bootable floppy/CD ISO DOS form.


Liam

It would definitely be best to use WD's own utility. You can get it here:

Western Digital Software & Drivers

You're probably right. I just created a Data Lifeguard floppy diskette. Based on the instructions it seems to be nearly identical to PowerMax and probably is the same program (DrDos), just rebranded by Western Digital. But no need to take unnecessary chances and maybe end up regretting it. I will be curious to know, since PowerMax is DrDos v.7.02. Heck, the more that I think about it, I may repair my friends computer with one of my spare drives and keep the new WD drive all for my lonesome self--the warranty on the WD unit is until 06/17/2009.

DrDOS is the Operating System, (similar to Microsoft's "MS-DOS"). The PowerMax program then runs on top of, (or within), the DrDOS environment.