Different branded hard drives - OK
Do you have the same manufacturer for PC at least? i.e. Dell or HP
Dell has great diagnostics for instance, installed on a utility partition that is around 71MB for their newest build.
Alternatively you could download diags based on your manufacturers individually -
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287
That really is your best bet though, since they would know their drives the best. Perhaps setup a station with hot-swap cabaility and have utility drives with these installed to boot to directly.