How to scan disks for physical errors?

[Jean-Paul ARGUDO <jpargudo@free.fr>]

Hi all

I hope someone can help me, and that this message will fly thru the user lists, since I had to get off the list because of technical problems (to many messages to be downloaded for my really low internet access)

I'm a new debianeer. I want to go progressively to full linux on my machine, since I have windows too, because of a scanner ans a webcam not recognized yet :((

My problem is the following : my hard disk make strange worrying noizes, for example, on moving big files, it suddenly stops with a brief loud noize then continues, then stops, etc... it's not regular but I worry a lot about that since I got no much money to buy a new disk.

Scandisk, defrag on windows not solves the problem, It's like the disk it's okay. 

My question : does any program exists under Debian Linux to scan a disk an to repair problems ? 

I add that this strange noises are only under windows, on linux, no noise at all...

Thanks a lot
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JP ARGUDO