Bookmark This! August 20, 2008 posted by Nigel

HDD Health – keep tabs on your computer’s hard disk health

hddhealth small HDD Health keep tabs on your computers hard disk health

HDD Health is a simple little freeware utility that monitors the health of your hard disk. It tells you the temperature too. Basic yes, but useful most definitely.

HDD Health is a full-featured failure-prediction agent for machines using Windows 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000 and XP. Sitting in the system tray, it monitors hard disks and alerts you to impending failure. The program uses Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) built into all new hard disks, and can predict failures on your hard drives. A host of alerting features include email, local pop-up messages, net messages, and event logging, while using no system resources.

Tags: hdd+health, freeware, hard+disk+monitor

About the Author:

Nigel is the managing editor of the Red Ferret, as well as a freelance columnist for the Sunday Times newspaper in London. Loves tech and fancies himself as a bit of a futurist, but then don't we all?

Nigel – who has written 5161 posts on The Red Ferret Journal.

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http://www.techdigest.tv Duncan

It couldn’t find my hard drive, but then it reported something as having 98% health, without specifying what. Ah well – I’m glad something’s healthy, whatever it is!
BPM

Google, who uses ALOT of hard drives, released an analysis of the failure rate a couple of years ago. Their conclusion was that temperature had little to do with failure. AGE was the biggest factor. It also showed that SMART was essentially useless as a predictor of failures.
DTM

@BPM – I saw that report too.

The other interesting fact they discovered was that if the hard drive didn’t fail within 3 months they tended to last for 2- 5 years.

I use Crystal Disk Info myself.
ron

If you’re wise enough to use Macs, just use SMARTReporter.