Testing the HDD for scratches?

Solution
Download HD Tune and run the scan, you will hear a loud screeching sound coming from the drive if its bad. don't mix up the normal sounds of read/write. This is about 10x louder than a normal drive and it will sound like metal on metal.

You can manually run check disk, look under windows accessories in your start menu. You won't see scratches listed but it checks for damaged sectors on your drive.
 
Download HD Tune and run the scan, you will hear a loud screeching sound coming from the drive if its bad. don't mix up the normal sounds of read/write. This is about 10x louder than a normal drive and it will sound like metal on metal.
 
Solution

Are there other ways to check for scratches? Like a third party software? Or are there any symptoms I shall check out for?
 
Generally if a HDD has scratches in the drive surface -- or physical damage, it will not work. You will hear a LOUD click-click-click-click coming from the drive when your PC tries to use it, and it will be extremely slow

A CD can have visible scratches and still work. Its not the same as a HDD.

There is no software that has a "test for scratches" option. HDD testing software will test for errors and report back to you. The errors might be caused by scratches, but more often they are caused by the magnetic recordings on the HDD surface failing.
 


It will if the drive is bad, but it won't do it for long before it stops working all together. If the drive is acting slow, it could just be fragmented data. This is normal and a defrag program can solved some of that.

Once again I would download HD Tune and check for errors if you think the drive is acting strange. Otherwise, there is nothing you can really do besides replacing the drive and or defraging it.