Q: Ok, I have an external hard-drive I suspect is failing. How can I test it? I tried HD Tune but it can't read the SMART data via USB (I don't think the USB cable can translate it). Any suggestions? It's a Samsnug laptop ATA-IDE drive. This isn't a flash-drive, it's a portable hard-drive. I can't format it or modify the data in any way (I'm recovering it for someone and determine if it's still usable). It wouldn't power up in it's enclosure but when I powered it up with a external adapter, it made a screach and spun up...so far it's been working even in the enclosure but I have no way to test it's reliability.
A: Search for HP USB Disk Storage Format tool. It's intended to format bootable HP USB drives, but it does some kind of deep formatting that brings bad flash drives back to life.