The prime purpose of DFT is to test hard disk drives while they remain inside a personal computer, even when the primary operating system may no longer be bootable. This is suggested when it is suspected that there is a malfunction that could be related to the hard disk drive. This is helpful, as often problems occur with data content and management that are unrelated to the function of the disk drive itself. In these cases, a reload of the operating system, or similar recovery action, is all that would be required to recover the computer. The use of DFT avoids unnecessary disturbance of the disk drive and usually will preserve other existing data belonging to the user, which may not have been backed up. This latest version of DFT has been enhanced to provide support for the latest Hitachi drives and also the Serial-ATA interface.

DFT is a DOS based utility and as such testing of the hard disk drive has no dependency on the original Partition Format or Operating System that is installed on the disk drive. The sector repairs option however, currently only supports Sector (LBA) to File identification for the following partition formats, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.
For unsupported partition formats i.e. ext2fs for Linux, HPFS of OS/2 DFT will now give the user the option of repairing corrupted sectors, however no information will be presented associating that sector with a filename.M.

The basic Drive Fitness Test (Quick, Advance and Exerciser) is non-destructive, which means that it will not perform any write operations in the user data area. This option was chosen to ensure the maximum integrity of user data.
When run, the Drive Fitness Test will provide a result, from which the condition of the drive - electronics and storage mechanism - can be determined. This can then be used to either choose to change a drive that is defective, or take other actions to restore the functionality of the PC.
A further diagnosis may determine that the drive has been subjected to handling damage. In the event that you have a Hitachi/IBM drive which is reported by DFT as defective, then you will be provided with a Technical Return Code (TRC) which will allow you to check and if appropriate generate a Returns Material Authorisation (RMA) via our web based warranty support process.

The Drive Fitness Test currently provides for in-depth testing of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and legacy IBM disk drives. It will perform basic testing of Other Manufacturers drives. This new version will support standard disk drives with the ATA/IDE, Serial-ATA and SCSI interfaces.
The basic tests will not overwrite customer data.

NOTE: DFT currently will NOT generate a TRC for failed drives that were not manufactured by IBM. In addition to hard drive testing, DFT contains utilities, which allows the following: -

• S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) to be enabled or disabled.
• Erasure of the disk Master Boot Sector
• Total Erasure of the data in the user area of the disk
• Initialise corrupted sectors
• View useful information about the drive, e.g. Microcode level, Specification Compliance.

More information and background about DFT is available from http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

• Creating a DFT diskette
• Running DFT