Diagnosing Your Hard disk - The Smart way
Be SMART in predicting hard disk's death
Even if you backup your data every second - in real time, you just
can't afford to loose your hard disk drive (HDD) at any unpredictable
moment. For example, imagine the odd situation when your Notebook
Computer's hard disk crashes while you are giving an impressive
multimedia presentation to a large audience. All your efforts in
making impressive presentation scores negative impression thanks to
sudden death of your HDD. To know the possible HDD trouble in
advance(a sort of predicting death of HDD), you can arm yourself by
using some hard disk diagnostic tools that analyze your HDD for its
health and report (predicts) its bad condition well in advance to its
possible crash. Newer HDD support Self Monitoring Analysis and
Reporting Technology (SMART). The HDD that support SMART have all the
necessary circuitry and program built in its logic card and all you
have to do is enable the SMART function through BIOS setting from your
computer. Note that if you have a few years old computer, then this
support may not be available in your BIOS, and you need to upgrade it.
Similarly, old hard disk drives may not support SMART.
SMART can reduce system down time by assessing the reliability of HDD.
It monitors health status of HDD, monitors drive temperature, prevents
data loss, monitor things that may lead to a HDD crash and predicts
possible drive failure using special algorithms and comparison with
preset values. SMART system also monitors performances of HDD's
intricate parts such as cables, motor, media (platters), head and
other electronic parts. If SMART detects a fault in your HDD, you are
immediately alerted through pop-up messages, sound or e-mail /
messenger notification etc. Once a HDD is diagnosed as having serious
problem by SMART, it should immediately be replaced. Though SMART
works through BIOS and HDD's built in utility, you can use some third
party SMART compliant HDD diagnostic utility that checks your HDD to a
bit advanced level and report HDD problems a bit friendly way.
SeaTools
This is a SMART compliant HDD diagnostic tool from Seagate, the
prominent HDD manufacturer. The utility runs from a bootable floppy
having a version of DOS. You can download the utility from
www.seagate.com. Upon executing the utility, it creates a bootable
floppy disk that contains entire necessary program on it. Now, to
check your HDD, you need to boot through this floppy. SeaTools has
variety of check for your HDD. It can check Seagate make HDD
thoroughly, yet it can even check HDD of other make in generic mode.
The tool is menu based and you simply have to select the options you
want to check. It has three main diagnostic test- Short diagnostic,
Generic Dianostic, and Extended test. The application asks you to test
either through drive self test (DST) or through computer. It scans
outer and inner diameter of platters, performs random seek and read,
data compare and finally checks electrical and mechanical parts for
their correct functioning. While Generic and Short test takes only
couple of minutes, extended test takes 90 seconds per GB for testing
HDD. It means for a 40 GB HDD, it takes more than an hour for a
complete extended test. Hence it is recommended that you first run
Short or Generic test, and if you find any error message, only then go
for the Extended test. The application can also check file structure
if you have FAT in your HDD. Other file systems are not supported yet.
Other HDD manufacturers have their own brand of HDD diagnostic
utility. Maxtor has PowerMax, IBM has SmartDefender, and Samsung has
HUTIL. All these proprietary utility are capable to test and diagnose
HDD only of their respective brand. For example, you cannot check a
Seagate HDD with Maxtor's PowerMax. These utilities can be downloaded
from the respective manufacturer's web sites.
Active SMART
DOS based HDD diagnostic utilities have their limitations. You have to
boot from a floppy to run them to know the condition of your HDD.
Often this may not be possible and you need a tool that constantly
monitors the status of your HDD and report the abnormal events and
errors while you are working. Active SMART is one such utility. Once
installed, it constantly monitors the status of your HDD in
background. If any HDD parameter changes and reached to abnormal
limits, it immediately reports you through variety of measures such as
pop-up messages, sound, and email/messenger messages. The incidents of
value changes and errors are also recorded on a log file to refer or
analyze at later time. Active SMART can be downloaded from
www.ariolic.com .
Drive Health
HDD diagnostic and reporting is easy with Windows based utility Drive
Health. Upon installation, it creates a tray bar icon indicating
present temperature status of the selected HDD. Drive Health monitors
your HDD in background and displays problem in HDD. It even predicts
possible failure date of a HDD. Drive Health provides you condition of
your HDD through SMART attributes. In general, you need not worry
about the value of these attributes. In any case, if it detects an
error or possible failure, it will warn you in advance. It displays
nearest T.E.C. (threshold Exceeded Condition) for a HDD. It is unknown
for a good HDD. If it is very low then you should really worry about
this HDD if not panic. You can download the trial version of Drive
Health from www.drivehealth.com .
As of now, SMART's prediction of HDD failure is not 100 percent
accurate. It may provide with false alarms and wrong predictions. It
may fail in detecting the HDD trouble. Despite having SMART enabled
HDD diagnostic utility installed in a computer, its HDD may crash
without any prior notice. However, as the SMART technology emerges,
fairly good degree of true prediction may be possible. Till then,
being smart in handling HDD is perhaps the only SMART way.
Screen shot descriptions:
1. Hddhel01 HDD manufacturer Maxtor's proprietary HDD diagnostic
utility PowerMax runs from a boot floppy so as to access HDD
directly and evaluate it for possible errors.
2. Hddhel02 If a failed HDD is tested for detecting problem area, and
if it is detected by the HDD diagnostic utility, then it is
displayed as Passed or Failed against respective attributes. This
test is helpful in pinpointing the problems of HDD and finding
their possible solutions.
3. Hddhel03 HUTIL - the HDD testing utility from Samsung. It tests
only Samsung make HDDs.
4. Hddhel04 Seagate's Seatool Startup Disk creator tool creates a
bootable floppy disk that has all the necessary HDD diagnostic
tools. Seatool has capability to test other than Seagate HDDs in
generic mode.
5. Hddhel05 Maxtor has HDD diagnostic utility similar to that of
Seagate's, but it tests only Maxtor's HDD.
6. Hddhel06 IBM's Smart Defender is a feature full HDD diagnostic
utility but it detects and tests only IBM HDD.
7. Hddhel07 Active SMART the Windows based application tests all
kinds of SMART compliant HDD. It runs constantly in background and
report abnormal behavior including failed attributes of HDD.
8. Hddhel08 Active SMART can give you Warning about your ailing HDD
in variety of ways such as pop-up window, log file, email messages
or through sound events.
9. Hddhel09 Drive Health is SMART compliant HDD diagnostic tool
available for Windows platform. Its friendly user interface lets
you know the present status of your HDD at a glance. It places a
tray bar icon that indicates the temperature of HDD.
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