The purpose of a hard disk validator is to validate the quality of a disk drive. It can alert you of all potential errors that could possibly occur on the device when you insert it into your PC, even if they are not detectable by the normal Windows Search feature. A disk drive can only be recognized by Windows when it passes the appropriate tests with its physical checksum. If there are errors in any of these areas, your system will not boot up and will often become unresponsive.
Software like this can run as a small, stand-alone application, or as part of Windows itself. There are plenty of good free applications available online and many of them work very well indeed. However, you should always check whether a particular free version has been updated recently, before you download and install it. Some of the best free disk utility software applications provide excellent virus protection as well, so you will not need to worry about getting infected.
There are many free versions available which you can use to backup, restore and perform disk maintenance functions. They can also be programmed to perform disk defragmentation automatically, or run a full disk scan on an event. For more complex functions such as defragging and multiple drives monitoring, free versions are often best. Microsoft also have their own free Disk Management Utility (in the form of the OEM CD) and all the usual disk maintenance functions that you would expect to find in a disk management utility, are there. However, it is recommended that you buy a license and add-on CD's to make sure that the software is fully functional.
