|
How to Check Your Hard Drive Health |
Author: Park Oskar |
| There are a lot of people that say they never know when their hard drive would fail! However that is not true; we actually do not know this because we don’t want to know it! We have taken our hard drive for granted. Today there are many tools present in the market which can easily act as shield for your drive and provide early information about the hidden problems your hard drive may be experiencing. |
| |
Let me ask you some basic questions:
Which processor you are using?
Which is the speed of the processor?
What is the size of the RAM?
I am sure most of you would have answered them; let me ask some other questions. |
| |
What is your hard Drive Version?
What is the ideal temperature of your hard drive?
How many Bad Sectors are there in your hard drive? |
| |
| So, how many questions are you able to answer? You must be thinking that there is no need to know all these; I would say that you are right, if your hard drive is not about to crash. It’s better to start taking care of your Hard Drive Health now. From my past experience I would suggest Stellar Smart is a very good Hard Drive Monitor Tool. You can download the demo version from here http://www.stellarinfo.com/hard-drive-monitor.htm |
| |
| You can also try other software present in the market. As I have used the above mentioned software, I can vouch for it – I presently use the package so that I am able to diagnose and become a doctor for my hard drive. In doing so I am able to give a bit more time to the upkeep of my hard drive so that I have less chance of loosing my critical data in the future running of my computer. |
| |
| Stellar Smart gives you the basic information about your hard drive, like |
- Hard Drive Version
- SMART Feature (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
- Model Number
- Serial Number
- Firmware Revision
|
| Other Advanced Information about your hard drive: |
- Total Sectors
- Number of Cylinders
- Number of heads
- Total Sector per Track
- Disk Size
- Physical Buffer Size
|
| This information is the basic building block of your hard drive which you normally do not require, however, sometimes knowing this information can help you in solving other issues related to your hard drive. |
| |
Bad Sectors in your hard Drive
Knowing that there are bad sectors in your hard drive is very important; by checking the amount of bad sectors you can conclude how vulnerable your drive is as the more there are; the more there is a problem growing with the drive. |
| |
Stellar Smart: Scan Hard disk
This feature helps you to know the actual number of bad sectors in your hard drive. If you find lots of Bad sectors in the scan then this would be the time that you start taking backup copies of your work and change your hard drive. |
| |
Monitor your hard drive temperature
High temperatures can harm your hard drive so you should always monitor your hard drive temperature. If you can set some temperature range such that if your hard drive temperature goes above it, you receive an alarm for that. Some times dust enters the hard drive motor and hinders the motor to run smoothly and the temperature rises and this can lead to hard drive failure. However if you are using some temperature alert then you can save yourself from losing data. |
| |
Stellar Smart provides an option to monitor the hard drive temperature.
You can set the warning temperature & shut down temperature. If the temperature of your hard drive reaches the preset warning temperature value then the software will give you the alert messages. And if it attains the shut down temperature then system will automatically shut down. This will save your data from possible corruption if you are not at the computer when this happens. |
| |
| As you can see this is very important tool, because you come to know about the temperature of your drive. Usually temperature doesn’t go above a limit, however if it goes that means that there is some problem with your drive and you better start taking backups of your important file or get you drive properly diagnosed. |
| |
| Some common hard disk attributes which Stellar Smart makes you aware of are: |
| |
Raw Read Error Rate
Indicates the rate at which read retries is requested. Lower values indicate that there is a problem with either the disk surface or the read/write heads. |
| |
Spin Up Time
Describes the amount of time it takes to spin the disk platters up to their rated rotation speed (usually 5400 or 7200 Revolutions per minute). Values above 80 should be considered good. Values between 70 and 80 are acceptable. |
| |
Start/Stop Count
Indicates the total number of drive start/stop cycles (including both power on/off switching and suspend/wakeup switching). |
| |
Reallocated Sectors Count:
Indicates the amount of spare sector pool options that are available. Spare sectors are used to replace sectors that become bad for some reason. A value of 100 means that no sectors have been replaced so far and a value of 1 means that spare sectors have been exhausted due to many replacements. |
| |
Power On Hours Count:
Indicates how long the disk was working (powered on). |
| |
Spin Retry Count:
Indicates the number of times the disk was unable to spin its platters up on the first attempt (lower values mean more retries). |
| |
Temperature:
Indicates the temperature of disks equipped with thermal sensors. |
| |
Ultra ATA CRC Error Count:
The UDMA controller performs error checking on the data it receives from the Hard Disk, ensuring that the data was not damaged while being transmitted over the cable. Each time an error is detected, the controller requests a retransmission, thus slowing down the overall transfer speed. Lower values of 'Ultra ATA CRC Error Count' correspond to a higher number of errors, usually indicating a cabling problem |
| |
Write Error Count:
Indicates the rate at which write retries are requested. Lower values indicate that there is a problem with either the disk surface or the read/write heads. |
| |
Recalibration Retries:
Indicates the number of times recalibration was requested. A low value (multiple recalibration) usually indicates some head positioning problem. |
| |
| I am sure all the above information about your hard drive will help you to identify the basic problem with your drive and you can save yourself from losing your important data. However if you loose your critical data you can try some data recovery software or data recovery services that are available online and in your area. |
| |
About the Author:
Park Oskar
Stellar Information Systems Ltd
Recover lost partition with windows partition recovery software. |
| |
|
|
| |
