I have an external drive that has had issues with corrupt data in the past. However, I'm not sure if this is a physical problem with the drive, or whether it was just a file problem.
Typically, I would take the drive out of the enclosure, install it in a computer, and use a bootable CD (such as the Ultimate Boot CD) to test a hard drive. However, I would also like to test the USB enclosure that this is in as well.
What do you suggest using to determine if this is a physical problem with the drive or USB enclosure?
I would suggest booting off a Linux live CD of some sort and use badblocks.
For example, a command like badblocks -n /dev/sda will scan the drive and do a non-destructive write as well.
I would take it out of the enclosure and run SpinRite on it, to do a full diagnostic on the inner workings of the hard disk drive.
Check the enclosure only after you have verified the drive is functioning properly.