how to test hard drive and other worn components?

[Nicola]

T42 with Win98SE
This morning at startup strangely the graphics with IBM and Pentium writing remained several seconds, as if it had stopped (the hard-disk led was off); even after the appearance of the writing "Starting Windows 98 SE ..."* the loading of the operating system was slow.

*I am Italian, I don't know as it appears in English.

I have repeatedly turned the computer on and off and the boot has always been normal (18/19 seconds).

Which is the best software to test the hard disk? Are you aware of other "wear problems" that can occasionally slow down startup?

I think the hard drive is a Fujitsu but I'm not sure.

[kfzhu1229]

In my experience this is just because the T42 is too new for Windows 98. The driver support are sketchy and that's probably why.
But if you wanna see how your hard drive is faring after 1.5 decades of life, just run anything that checks SMART values (I use Crystaldiskinfo but you need a more modern OS to run that) and see if it is registering any increasing bad sectors and stuff.

[Nicola]

In my experience the T42 is perfect with Win98, I have been using them together for 12 years.
I wrote that maybe the disc is a Fujitsu, I got confused with my T23. In the device list of T42 the disk is generic, I don't know the brand.

[RealBlackStuff]

Try this: https://msfn.org/board/topic/158319-hdd ... for-win98/

You need a laptop/PC with Win XP or newer to test the HDD with: https://hddscan.com/

[Nicola]

I recommend the SmartUDM 2.00 software (I remember it is for dos)
http://www.sysinfolab.com/files/smartudm.zip
In addition to the smart items that indicate all the software, this also shows a rating bar (clearer than items you don't understand).

My hard-disk is perfect.
I once turned on the computer and the optical drive did not appear; I restarted and it appeared. Before I had changed the voice on the optical drive (from high speed to normal) in the bios. If this has nothing to do with it, could the optical driver slow down the startup of the computer if the cd/dvd-drive has problems turning on?
Are there tests to check the correct functioning of the DVD/CD-drive?