Testing hard drive for errors...what to use?

If a hard drive is crashing and has errors, what software would you use to verify that? Gateway wants to verify that my laptop HD is going bad. They said they needed a written estimate/diagnosis from a local PC shop or a verifiable logfile. (Don't say WTF as this is the 2nd time in a year the laptop HD has gone bad.) So I want to provide them with something. So far I've found hard drive test pilot, but don't know if I can use the Trial version to run a full test or not. What to do? (Gateway is pretty good, I have no probs providing proof. Memtest86 showed 0 errors after 3 complete passes).

you got the lap top from gateway? if so, couldn't they simply do it themselves or provide u with a way of doing it yourself?

Hard drive manufacturers usually have free utilities to provide such information. Find out what make of drive you use and visit their webpage.

For example, Maxtor has Powermax for their line of household drives.

Gateway didn't seem to have any problem with me returning the laptop HD. They didn't ask for/demand I run any particular software. It did fail way too quick though...only about 10mos of use up to this point. I will test the RAM with memtest86 soon, just to be sure it's OK.

Just use microsoft checkdisc/scandisc and run a full deep scan, it usually tells you most realy bad errors