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