Well I found this GAOTD pretty much accurate with regard to S.M.A.R.T. attributes in order to predict any possible HD failure (raw read error rate, spin up time, error rate etc...); and it's also noobs friendly since it can interpret the S.M.A.R.T. data it found with a very easy expanation.

So overall it does the job pretty well and as GAOTD it's ABOVE AVERAGE, but seems to be more suitable for PC DESKTOPS rather than LAPTOPS (support for external drives also appears to be limited).

Personally I prefer a tool designed to check the health of my USB and External drives, as most of my backup data are there....how about you dudes?

And anyway, as usual charging money for a product like this doesn't make too much sense to me nowadays...what do you make of it dudes?

http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/About (==> unlike this GAOTD it's more suitable for external HDs and USB flash Drives)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Western-Digital-DLG-Diagnostics.shtml

Wanna a FREE & PORTABLE app?? No problem, with Giovanni you can do that for FREE:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/System/System-Info/Portable-CrystalDiskInfo.shtml

To monitor the fan speed, voltage and chip temperature, so as to avoid damaging your system by restraining the excessive heat of both HD and CPU, try these 2 FREE GEMS:

* SpeedFan (==> Softpedia Editor Pick & my Personal First Choice)
With this magic FREE TOOL users can tweak both voltage and temperature parameters speed fans, according to the detected temperatures, so as to avoid damaging their system by restraining the excessive heat of both HD and CPU.
It can also perform an in-depth analysis on your HDs, by monitoring the S.M.A.R.T. readings of your EIDE, SATA and SCSI hard disks and RAID controllers, thus allowing users to anticipate any possible system failures in the future.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

* eFMer TThrottle (==> Supports both Intel and AMD Processors sporting an internal temperature sensor)
Can monitor the CPU & GPU (CUDA/ATI) temperatures and set the runtime of any running program, to make sure that the CPU or Gpu Processor temperature doesn't exceed a certain temperature.
Yes, you heard that right: what it does is adjusting the amount of time a certain process (program) may run, and then stop all threads of it for a short amount of time should the Core temperature exceed the warning level.
This way you'll always keep the temperature of your system below the “Set Temperature”: cool, isn't it? Must have program especially for LAPTOP users!!

http://efmer.eu/boinc/index.html

Enjoy!

Cheers by Giovanni Mr FREE!!!

Giovanni Mr FREE tarafından yorumlandı  –  12 years ago  –  Bu yorumu yararlı buldunuz mu? evet | hayır (+245)

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Pros
*Analyzes and monitors the health of hard drives using S.M.A.R.T.
*Instead of just giving you raw S.M.A.R.T. data, provides some easy-to-understand stats about the health of your drive
*Has multiple different ways of you warning you of potential failure, such as via email
*Works with all types of internal and external drives that support S.M.A.R.T. -- which is pretty much all modern drives

Cons
*As is typical with all programs of this type, failure detection/prediction is not 100% accurate

Free Alternatives
Ashampoo HDD Control 2 (freebie, not freeware)
HDD Expert
HDDScan

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review

Ashraf tarafından yorumlandı  –  12 years ago  –  Bu yorumu yararlı buldunuz mu? evet | hayır (+123)

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The majority of manufacturers of prebuilt machines usually include software of this nature for free.

If you visit the website of your hard drive manufacturer, you should be able to download a whole bunch of diagnostics and utilities for free.

At the end of the day, A warning that my hard drive is not doing so well is nice. A quality backup done that is maintained twice a week is far better.

Entruchio tarafından yorumlandı  –  12 years ago  –  Bu yorumu yararlı buldunuz mu? evet | hayır (+42)

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Thanks to AltrixSoft & GOTD.
Downloaded,installed and activated.
Tested it.

Result: Very Good.
• you can choose whether to run it at Windows start up
• you can choose whether to display disk's death time estimation

It will run minimised. You can right click and choose to [Open Hard Drive Inspector] to see the main window.

The software displays the hard disk's health under 3 main areas:
• Reliability [e.g. "Good"]
• Performance [e.g. "Good"]
• Error resistance [e.g. "Good"]

It shows the temperature of your various hard disks.
You can choose to display in Fahrenheit or Celsius.

It will also display the temperatures in small font in the system tray area.

It displays data about the hard disks:
• capacity
• total free space
• the accumulated total power-on time (since it was first used)

Well thought through software product and good programming.
Excellent user interface.

This is on par with the other very good software named Hard Disk Sentinel.

ric tarafından yorumlandı  –  12 years ago  –  Bu yorumu yararlı buldunuz mu? evet | hayır (+34)

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SpinRite by Gibson Research is the grandfather of hd analysis. I feel that SpinRite is the gold standard of hd defect detection and recovery. SpinRite works on ALL drives, with and without SMART.

https://www.grc.com/sr/whatitdoes.htm

Anything else is just assisting us to see and understand the SMART info, which is better than nothing.

Sure, SpinRite isn't free. But it works.

disclaimer - I do not work for or have material interest in Gibson Research... just passing along the facts.

ken tarafından yorumlandı  –  12 years ago  –  Bu yorumu yararlı buldunuz mu? evet | hayır (+22)

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