Drive Health indicator

[Super Fast]

I love Defraggler, but could you add a drive health utility to it?

 

Perhaps it can show a percent next to the drive, indicating approximate health?

For example: 32%

 

Doesn't have to be exact, but I figured if it show this, then a user can have a better estimation of when to do a critical backup before they crash...

This way, a dying drive would be less likely to catch them off guard, & a user would be much more likely to backup a drive that is at 25% health, than one at 99%...

 

Maybe integrate a warning that let's a user know that, "Drive failure is imminent... Please backup drive soon!" (when drive drops below 25% health...)

A color indicator would be great!

 

Green -> excellent health (76 to 100%)

Yellow -> good health (51 to 75%)

Orange -> declining health (26 to 50%)

Red -> dying drive (0 to 25%).

 

 

+ me if you like this idea!

 

P.S. I posted the idea for Defraggler, because while there is Speccy, most people use Defraggler & CCleaner more often than they ever would Recuva or Speccy... What better way for people to know their drive health? Many times, they are caught off guard when their drive "mysteriously" dies.

 

This way, no-one will ever be caught off guard again, since most people do use Defraggler on a regular basis, & adding it to CCleaner would make no sense!

[redhawk]

approximate health?

How exactly are you suppose to quantify approximate health??

 

The life span of a hard drive follows no set pattern, it could be working now and dead the next day i.e. bad controller board or the drive won't spin up.

There is also the S.M.A.R.T. status and while this does indicate possible hardware problems it's still not enough to predict the life expectancy of a hard drive.

A drive could have bad sectors and work fine without problems for many years like my old work PC which I have used continuously for well over 8 years with bad sectors.

 

Having said that it would be useful for Defraggler to monitor the S.M.A.R.T. status for attributes like temperature since Defragging being an intensive process of reading and writing data would generate a certain amount of heat.

A hard drive with problems can in some cases over heat very quickly and damage itself by intensively disk operations or by inadequate cooling.

 

Richard S.

[Super Fast]

How exactly are you suppose to quantify approximate health??

Richard S.

 

I have used a few drive health programs before, & while there are exceptions to the rule, it is generally good to backup if your drive falls to below 25% health.

A drive can be perfectly healthy & still have bad sectors. The bigger a drive, the more chances of bad sectors, as no drive is perfect, & they are bound to happen.

 

I know what your thinking about, but that is different than determining a drives overall health.

I am pretty sure that a drive's health is not determined by bad sectors, since all drives are prone to that!

[Alan_B]

I have used a few drive health programs before...

 

I know what your thinking about...

You may know what we are think about,

but we have no clue what you are thinking about.

 

Give us a clue, define what you "have used a few drive health programs before"

[Super Fast]

You may know what we are think about,

but we have no clue what you are thinking about.

 

Give us a clue, define what you "have used a few drive health programs before"

Sure! I will send you links to 3 of them so you can see what I mean.

 

The first is http://www.panterasoft.com/ & HDD Health is a freeware app.

Though it says my drive is 100% health, I am not 100% certain I trust this one 100%!

My drive performance is definitely good, & the drive is excellent health, just not sure about 100%

 

The second is http://www.drivehealth.com/ & download drive health. It also suggests 100% drive health.

 

The third, & the one I perhaps trust the most, is http://hddlife.com

You can download a trial & it functions as freeware for the 1st 15 days.

This one suggests that while my performance is at 100%, the drive health is actually at 82%.

 

I trust the 3rd one because I have used it on several occasions. I posted 3, because I am quite sure they differ in how they arrive at their conclusion. I am not certain if the other 2 figure on if a drive is at 100% performance, it is also at 100% health or what. The 3rd seems most accurate.

 

Feel free to download & test them to see what I mean.

 

Peace!

[hazelnut]

Here is another one, tests all makes of drives

 

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

[Super Fast]

Here is another one, tests all makes of drives

 

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

I tried Seagate, but I didn't like what it did.

 

It wanted to install C++ 2005 support, when I already had C++ 2008 (courtesy of Nero installer)

Additionally, it took a long time to run (compared to the other utilities) & many of the "features" such as drive space used, etc, were duplicious & had nothing to do with "drive health".

 

The interface was very dated looking as well. I uninstalled it after trying it. Binary Sense health HDD Life is a pretty accurate seeming program.

 

P.S. The Sea Tools needed just over a 17 mb installer (which i am sure was compressed, & decompressed into double or triple that size) to do what other utilities did with just a few mb. Additionally, I had the distinct impression, that sea tools also checked drive performance as an indicator of health, unlike HDD Life that seems to give a truer % life reading.