Facebook Plunges Again
Tumblr 101: Tips And Tricks To Get Started
GSmartControl lets you monitor your hard drive's health in detail
S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. It's a nice bit of intelligence that hard drive makers have been including into drive firmware for several years now. In simple terms, it's supposed to let you know that a drive is about to crash before the crash happens. You can then take measures to protect your data or, perhaps, return the drive to the manufacturer (if it's still under warranty).
One interesting thing is that, while drives have been making this information available for quite a while, I am not aware of any built-in Windows features that take it into account. In other words, I don't think I get an automatic pop-up saying "your hard drive is dying" when doom is impending.
Instead, to access that information and try to learn something, I need to use a standalone monitoring application. GSmartControl is one such application, and it seems very solid. It's open-source, free, and cross-platform (GTK-based, so it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux).
It's aimed at power users and administrators. You won't find a large, green, anti-virus style button that says "Everything is Okay." Instead, you'll find a wealth of statistics with cryptic names like "Reallocation Event Count." When you hover over each, you'll get an extensive explanation of what it means.
GSmartControl also lets you test the drive. The shortest test takes two minutes and consists of a "collection of test routines that have the highest chance of detecting drive problems."
This isn't the only tool for doing this kind of thing, and it is utterly lacking in any type of visual flair. But it's free, solid, and open-source.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsBugMeNotJun 22nd 2010 8:01AM
I would like an application that runs completely silently in the background, eating very little memory, does regular checks of the HDDs and only annoys me when something requires my attention.
Any recommendations on that?
Actually it would be nice if that were built into Windows...
apassJun 22nd 2010 8:44AM
Does this work for external usb harddisks from WD or seagate?
ChristinaJun 22nd 2010 10:40AM
For what it's worth, I had a hard drive fail on an Acer box running Windows Vista. I recognize the S.M.A.R.T. utility from error messages I received while doom was indeed impeding. I can't seem to locate the screenshot I took, but the warning message I received (after downloading some superfluous instructions) went something like this:
"You have saved the instructions successfully. Now back up your files, shut down the computer, and repair or replace the hard disk. [OK] [Remind me later.]"
blasztaJun 30th 2010 12:40AM
I use Acronis Drive Monitor (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/), free.