Good hard drive scanner

In the world of continuing cycles, Microsoft dumped scandisk and beefed up chkdsk for XP.

You can also right click on a drive, select properties, and on the tools tab, perform an error check.

Most of your other disk tasks are performed from:
Administrative Tools;
Computer Management;
Disk Manager

From disk manager, you can set partition structure and format along with checking drive health and assigning drive letters and volume labels.

If you switch from the FAT32 to the NTFS file system on your hard drives, the built in data security and protection measures will be of value.

Since XP crashes a LOT less often than W98, you don't have the need for regular disk scanning and file repair.

As far as further tests for your hard drives, check with the drive manufactures. Many have utilities that you can download to check their hard drives.

Chas