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Creative Intelligence @ Your Service |
Site Map +1 214 234 9283 | Send Email |
Many of our customers go through the difficulty of experiencing a hard disk drive crash, but many do not. Why is that? Well, the mean time between failure of a computer's hard drive is seven years of continuous, heavy duty use. Customers who replace computers every five to seven years avoid the problem in the first place.
But wouldn't it be nice to know, say, three to six months in advance that a hard drive was about to fail? Fortunately there is software that lets one do just that. In this tip, we describe how to download and use software for this purpose.
As usual, refer to the contact information and call or email with any questions.
All modern hard drives have a technology called S.M.A.R.T. or Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This allows a hard drive to essentially repair itself: several sectors are reserved in a spare pool. When one sector has too many read errors, for example, it is replaced with one in the spare pool.
Unfortunately Windows does not always find out the hard drive has been swapping good sectors for bad until it's too late. Fortunately Western Digital provides outstanding software that specifically monitors S.M.A.R.T data and also does full surface read testing.
To download this software, perform the following steps:
Visit the Western Digital download site.
In the left hand column under "Please make your selection below," click on the first entry, or "Most Popular Downloads."
In the right hand column under "Please select a software below," click on the first entry, or "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows."
A Download button appears. Click the button and save the file to disk, for example to the desktop.
Double-click on the file and follow the prompts to install the software.
Note: this software must be installed and run in administrative mode. Remember, however, that we mentioned in a previous article that one should not normally run in administrative mode.
When starting the software, one must agree to the license. This license says, among other things, Western Digital is not responsible for data loss caused by the software. And we don't blame them. Remember, backups are necessary for fully functional hard drives, too.
Once started, the software shows all drives installed in the system, including USB drives. In the right hand column is the S.M.A.R.T status: if this shows "Fail," the drive is at high risk of data loss and needs to be replaced.
For any drive that has a S.M.A.R.T. status (USB drives do not), one can run some tests. Here are the options:
Quick Test: Reads some of the drive randomly and verifies the drive is installed correctly.
Extended Test: Reads every sector of the drive verifies the drive is 100% readable.
Write Zeros: Writes to the drive destructively. Do not perform this test, unless the goal is to erase the drive of all information!
As a matter of course, we recommend running the Quick Test monthly and the Extended Test quarterly. If the software detects a read error, it may correct the error or not. We recommend replacing drives that are five or more years old which start experiencing uncorrectable read errors.
The Apple Macintosh operating system incorporates its own software for repairing and testing drive errors. This is called Disk First Aid or Disk Utility, depending on the version of the Mac operating system (Classic, OS X) installed on the computer.
Unfortunately this software cannot fully verify and repair the start-up drive. Fortunately there are two work-arounds for this limitation:
Boot the Mac using the operating system install disk, and run the utility from the CD.
Hold down a key during start-up, usually SHIFT, to verify the disk before the operating system loads.
We recommend verifying the disk every month or so. When one starts to see errors for no particular reason (losing AC power is a good reason to expect disk errors), it's time to worry about hard drive replacement.
As mentioned in a December, Microsoft is planning to ship Service Pack (SP) 3 for XP and SP1 for Vista. Well, good news for Vista users: SP1 is ready to go. It's available via Windows Update or via download from Microsoft's web site.
Unfortunately XP SP3 is not yet available. Microsoft was scheduled to release the update on April 29, 2008, but it has slipped due to a problem with retail management software. We will advise customers when it becomes available.
To repeat something from March, Windows XP SP2 will be offered at retail until June 30, 2008 and we recommend all customers requiring Windows purchase only this operating system. We do not and will not recommend Vista. After XP is no longer available, we encourage customers to seek alternative operating systems such as Apple's OS X or Novell's Suse Linux.
Just contact us with any comments, concerns, or questions about items contained in this document. Or IT issues in general. Or call us at the telephone number below.
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