hard drive smart infomation

Hi, this is a sort of extension from my other hard drive thread, i was wondering if i could get an app that reads smart infomation to read the status of the drive by reading the smart infomation. any ideas of an app that can do that?


I found this utiity called diskcheckup is it anygood?
http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm
thanks in advance
lodore

 

Hi Lodore,

I'm not familiar with the app in question, but a couple useful tips to keep drives in tip top shape:

Run chkdsk from windows 'recovery console' requires xp disk &

The very great tool, Spinrite!

Sorry if this not exactly what your looking for!

Take Care
rico

 

i was gonna run chkdisc and i keep my disk defragmented using diskeeper.
i was hoping someone could know if the utility I found that reads smart information is any good and if anyone could help me with the read outs to see how the condition is.

lodore

 

Hard disk drive, I love you!

 

Hi lodore

I cannot comment about DiskCheckup.
For the same purposes, I am currently using DriveSitter.
http://www.otwesten.de/drivesitter/features.htm
However, it is not free for personal use.
Comes with a very good help file, which IMO explains vey well the advantages and limitations of SMART monitoring, all well as the statistical limitations of TEC forecasts.
It is worth a try.
Just my two cents.
Best regards
Rui

 

Hi

Theres this. HDD Health which is freeware

www.panterasoft.com

As I recall, I got this from one of Mrkvonics excellent help threads

 

thanks for all the replys
hdd life didnt install properly so uninstall right away.
drive sitter i didnt try because it isnt free.
hdd health worked thou and said no issues with the harddrive which is good.

lodore

 

My question is, do these apps really work, I mean is this SMART stuff reliable? Btw the latest freeware version of Everest Home Edition also shows SMART HDD info.

 

It is reliable, the furthest extent it can go to is just to report on the health status of your drive. You still need to be responsible to keep your drive healthy, SMART technology will not fix any problems, it just reports it only.

As a side note, EVEREST Home Edition is discontinued already.

 

BTW what do u mean to keep ur drive healthy? Does it need some vitamins etc!!

 

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
S.M.A.R.T., pioneered by Compaq in an effort to improve reliability, is an industry standard for advance reporting of imminent hard disk drive failure. When this feature is enabled in the BIOS and a S.M.A.R.T.-compliant hard disk drive is installed, detected problems can be reported. This enables the user to replace a faulty hard disk drive before it fails, that may otherwise have resulted in data lose.
Legally a manufacture in order to advertise S.M.A.R.T. compliancy needs only to refer to the signalling method between the hard disk drive’s electro-mechanical sensors and the host computer. Consequently, the term S.M.A.R.T. can have less protection value for the consumer, making it difficult and confusing to make valid comparisons of manufactures hard disk drives as their information on S.M.A.R.T. is not readily disclosed. Until an openly disclosed policy covering the principal S.M.A.R.T. indicators is publicly available the standard can be abused and at best limited.
Manufacturers that have supported one or more S.M.A.R.T. attributes (technological leading indicators) e.g., monitoring hard disk drive performance, faulty sectors, recalibration, cyclic redundancy check (often abbreviated CRC) errors, hard disk drive spin-up time, hard disk drive heads, distance between the heads and the hard disk drive platters, hard disk drive temperature, characteristics of the media, and motor and servomechanisms besides many others include: Samsung, Seagate, IBM (Hitachi), Fujitsu, Maxtor, and Western Digital. These manufacturers may not necessarily agree on precise attribute definitions and measurement units; therefore the list should be regarded as a general reference only. However, if a safety threshold for that attribute and hard disk drive is exceeded a warning is given.
Nevertheless, regardless of the secrecy employed by some hard disk drive manufactures, a number of operating system specific software can extend the users ability to monitor hard disk drive conditions through the S.M.A.R.T. interface and predict when a failure is likely to occur by logging deviations in attribute values, of which there can be many. This software may also possess the capability to distinguish between gradual degradation over time, i.e., wear and tear, and a sudden change, indicator of a serious problem or immanent failure.
Recommendation: Ariolic’s ActiveSmart
(http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/)

 

What I meant was:
-Check your hard disk for any errors regularly with CHKDSK or some other 3rd-party disk checking tool.
-Defragment your drive regularly.

It's just a piece of technological equipment. Those are the vitamins to keep it in check.

 

Hello,
Make sure you have plenty of hard drives around and make backups among them. So if one fails, it won't hurt (much). UPS is also very useful.
I sometimes use SpinRite to resurrect dead drives.
I have a 10GB drive from 1999, still running like king. Never once failed, knock on wood.
Mrk

 

I think spinrite and UPS are paid products, right? And 10GB is quite small for a hard disk...

 

Hello,
Paid indeed.
10GB was ok for 1999.
Still useful for testing Linuxes.
Mrk