A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

This is a Program that claims it can check your hard drive and report if it is "dying".

http://www.hddlife.com/

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

Having suffered a harddrive failure recently, I have taken to defragmenting and running scandisk regularly. However, the report back from Hitachi (formerly and IBM drive) suggests better cooling. I spent all of £26 on an external drive case with a cooling fan and it is a lot better.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

Here's your first confirmation post on this product.

I procrastinated for several weeks but about two weeks ago, on a whim, I dicided to load it and see what it said about my hard drives.....

My main 80g HD showed 10% life and 10% performance. Hmmm... That might explain the s.l.o.w.s.
A few days later, it showed 8% life and 8% performance.

ACK!! If this thing was right, then it's a wake-up call!

I immediatly ran a Windows 2000 backup and then tried to ghost the drive. It wouldn't ghost because of a bad sector. :( Before I could try again, the Drive completly crashed! :e

I didn't have another 80G drive to replace it with and I can't afford to buy one right now but, I did have an old 4G drive from really old computer. I installed windows 2000 and other software on the 4g "C" drive and I am now using my backup external drive for my KMA's.

My last backup was a month old so, I still wouldn't have lost it all but, thanks to this product, I was able to get better prepared. :)

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

is it possible that this program could cause your hard drive to crash ??

just a question. im not implying anything !

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

Beavis,
I don't think that is possible. I have it loaded on my systems to test it. It seems to read the Performance of the drive and monitors the drives Temperatures, and from this data I think it comes up with how reliable the drive is. But as to making a HD fail, I don't think it would be possible for it to cause a hardware failure.

It seems pretty neat, and if it does work, this is awesome.

Bdayton, wow that is pretty scary that it was that correct. I wasn't sure if it would be worth it or not, but I guess it is.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

Aside from just beating the drive to death, (Which it did not, and java programs and windows do a pretty good job of that by themselves), I don't see how that would be possible.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

NO! :r

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

I bought a brand new laptop and downloaded this program. It seems to be a cool program but it says my hd peformance is 100% but health is only 41%. Is this bad or good. It says everything is good on the comments. Does anyone have a health status higher than 41% on a brand new drive?
Thanks

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

Are there any programs to test the external usb drives? I have lost 2 in the past year. Fortunately they were both backed up and under waranty but with using the usb drive for my kma files the security check would be nice.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

AZKaraoke,
I have it running also. I tried it on a brand new drive and it told me 100% on the 2 I tried. Currently on my Laptop that I have been using every day for about 2-3 years it states that my drives are at about 49%.

I also wish it worked on USB drives, but it doesn't from what they state on their website.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

I have a 9 year-old laptop with a 4gig HD. The program reports 100%/100% on the HD. In 9 years, I've never had a problem with that HD. Even so, I'm not sure whether to believe it or not.

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

For anyone needing a new drive, Seagate is now offering a five year warranty on their internal drives only. They are staying with one year on the USB's.

That says something.

Have no idea how much of it is based on the reliability of internals vs USB's and how much of it based on user abuse of the USB's.

George

Re: A program that checks your Hard Drives for Reliablitiy
 

IBM developed somthing a few yrs back called smart drive. it checks spindle speed and tolerances to see if your drive is going bad.not sure how well it works. but maxtor uses it. Bob :)

This program caused me nothing but problems on my new desktop. It was falsely sensing my HD was overheating and would shut down the pc. Assuming it was correct, I let the pc cool off for an hour and restarted it. The pc immediatley shut down as soon as windows loaded and the HD program loaded. It took me a while, I had to get windows to stay open long enought to uninstall it, but I did eventually get it uninstalled. Try this program at your own risk! BTW there is nothing wrong with my HD or my pc... its less than a month old!

My best guess is that something in your new PC and/or it's Hard Drive is incompatable with the HDDlife program.
What model and brand of PC did you get? and if possible, can you identify the brand and model of the Hard Drive?

Its a compaq presario sr1420nx 2.93 celeron 512mb pc2700 ram,
and 80GB HD(samsung sp0802n.)

You got yourself a top-of-the-line HD using the newer Serial ATA (7 lines including ground) data cable sporting MUCH higher data transfer rates than is possible with the older parallel ATA. I read Samsungs short white paper on the drive and they report no compatability problems and, it is stated to be ATA S.M.A.R.T. compliant. (Which means that it SHOULD work with HDDLIFE).

However, I note that both USB and FireWire use reduced numbers of wires, (Never botherd to count them), and HDDLIFE will not work with these. Unless somebody else has a drive of this type that is working with HDDLIFE, my best guess would be that HDDLIFE will not work with your drive for the same reason.

Only the folks at hddlife.com can tell you for sure.
I thought I could be more help. Sorry.

Checking Hard Disc reliability
 

Hey All,
Just a note....... Windows XP checks hard discs.
1. After Start Up right click My Computer
2. Scroll down to Manage
3. Left click
4. Scroll down to Disk Management
5. Left Click
6. All Hard disks will be listed with their status. i.e. Healthy,
active, system, failing, unreadable etc.
You can do a scan check, set active partitions, delete and change drive
letters. A little like the old Fdisk routine.
Also enables those with SATA hard drives to have them recognized and
formatted, ready for use.
Hope this is of use to some of you having difficulties.
Regards from across the pond
Garry