Inspiron 1100 Hard drive

I have an Inspiron 1100 with a 30gb hard drive. I received a stop error and took it to a computer shop.

They claim that the hard drive had died. I have been able to reload windows xp. I have tried to test it with Dos chkdsk but it does not stay on the screen long enough for me to read. I do know that there are 16mb in a bad sector. How can I check this drive to determine if there is really an error before I replace the drive.

When I returned to the shop they said that the drive had a major problem and not to trust it that is why I want to test it. When I put the Dell diagnostic disk in nothing happens.

Thanks