The only program you should ever use to test an IBM drive is "Drive Fitness Test" from IBM, you can download it from this page:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm
If this program finds any errors on your hard drive it gives you the option to low level format it. The utility is safe to use, just remember that the data on the disk can disappear.
Another nice utility you can download from the same page is "SMART defender", it monitors your disk from Windows and predicts failures.