software for hard drive testing?

[vintagepen]

I notice that not many of the HDD manufs support linux. Is there a package anywhere which can perform the extended SMART, sector replacement, temperature, read/write etc tests to see condition of internal or external drives please?

I use lots of boxes with IDE drives which are becoming a bit elderly by now and would like to know when (not if) they are going to fail. I have been recommended the ordinary disk utility but cant find it in synaptics nor in the software repository. It certainty isnt built into and does it not work in debian? It's functionality looks plenty adequate for my purposes and I am not particulary comfortable with Terminal commands.

Somehow this posting managed to get put in the wrong forum, where someone asked me which version I am using! Then, when I waited to respond, having just changed my power management settings to spin down the hard drive on suspend, the changes caused my computer to die as soon as the drive spun down! (the dreaded 'HDD won't wake from suspend' problem)

[Jerom]

Good article : http://m.linuxjournal.com/magazine/monitoring-hard-disks-smart
G'luck with snail ide!