1TB SATA HDD not testable by SeaTools via T61 USB

[crashnburn]

1TB SATA HDD not testable by SeaTools via T61 USB

HDD1:
I have a Seagate Retail Kit (ST31000340AS) 1TB SATA HDD currently attached to my Thinkpad laptop via a SATA > USB Dongle.

I have transferred a bunch of data to it from other older IDE HDDs. I want to do a HARD diagnostic of the Drive against it going dead soon.

HDD2:
I also have a Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500GB USB Drive.

Test App 1:
I have a Boot CD (including Seagate, Hitachi etc tools) for testing HDDs but that only detects the the INTERNAL drives.

Test App 2:
I recently installed Seagate SeaTools for Windows to test the HDD1 & HDD2. They both show up as connected via USB/1394 and show Drive Status as : Ready to Test

I ran the test and it ran on HDD2 which shows Ready to Test after wards but my repeated attempts to run it on HDD1 show up Drive Status as: Test Unvailable, for any / all kinds of tests.

I would presume that there would be some way to test this HDD without putting as an internal drive on a PC. please do let me know.

EVEN IF THERE IS A NON-SEAGATE / NON-HITACHI or brand specific tool that I can use to do an INTENSIVE check on the HDD that would be connected to the Laptop via USB > SATA cable / dongle.

Thanks in advance.