I recently built a new system with a Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640 GB HDD. Everything went fine until I actually installed the OS (Vista). I tried both 32-bit and 64-bit editions but both wouldn't update properly and would give me random BSODs. I ran Memtest twice (17 passes and 6 passes, respectively) and received no errors.Now Vista won't boot up at all, giving me an "invalid or damaged bootable partition". Trying to repair Vista from the install DVDs results in more errors. I'm not sure what could be causing these errors, but I want to narrow down the list of possible candidates by making sure that the HDD isn't the culprit.

Anyway, my question is, are there any programs that check for damaged hard drive sectors and can be written to a CD? (i.e. programs that run directly from a CD, without an OS, like Memtest)

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Try Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD). It doesn't say Vista compatible, but I don't think that is a problem. The CD is bootable and runs from DOS. If you need an ISO burner to make the Bootable CD from the ISO image, then you can use ISO Recorder Ver. 2.

Thanks for the help! I ended up using the Ultimate Boot CD because it has everything on it :X