I have a couple hard drives that are either broken or just corrupted. I want to use UBCD diagnostics to determine which.

Only problem is I don't want to have my computer running off a liveCD because then I can't use it! This is also a common thing I have to do because my dad is terrible with computers and someone breaks hard drives frequently. Naturally I am his de facto tech support.

My plan is to use virtualbox as a virtual machine, boot it into UBCD then use it on the hard drives while doing other things in Windows 7. I just wanted to check with the experts here before going ahead with it.

Is this possible? Also, would it be better to plug the drives into my motherboard with sata? Or can I use an external enclosure? Thanks for your help!

If use the hard drive tools of the manufactures, which communicate with the hard drive directly (self test, ...), you can't use a virtual machine.

It is not recommended to use a virtual machine anyway, when you want to do something with your hard drives. You need to be absolutely sure that Windows 7 doesn't need to access the other hard drives (unmount all partitions). Else, bad things can happen.

It also depends on your definition of broken or corrupted. Do you just want to get files of the drive or do you want to check for bad sectors.

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Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

I want to know if I can use the hard drive again. The data has already been backed up.

I decided not to go the virtual machine route. I used UBCD in an external CD drive connected to a netbook connected to the hard drive I want to test. It gave me error messages about not being able to detect a CD drive even though I had gone through the UBCD menu.

You can put UBCD on a USB stick too (ubcd2usb script).
Try also UBCD50RC2.

_________________
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/