SMART, which stands for Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, allows a hard disk to detect its own malfunctioning so that the anticipated detection of failures may allow users to take the necessary measures and avoid data loss. However, two important conditions must be met. First, the hard disk itself must support the technology; and second, your computer’s BIOS has to be compatible with it.
DiskChekup can collect and process information about hard disks, including SMART attributes. Fortunately, it supports multiple types of connection interfaces, such as ATA, USB and Firewire. The program is actually very simple, but the real complication appears if you don't know how to interpret the data provided. Fortunately, the tool shows not only SMART attributes but also their threshold levels. Among the data shown, you can find Spin Up Time, Raw Read Error Rate, Seek Error Rate. Moreover, as a snapshot of the current data may not be enough, DiskCheckup also allows you to access a history of those values. Self-test routines also have a great importance in detecting failures. Two types of these tests are supported: the short one, taking 1 to 5 minutes to produce results, and the extended one, which needs about ten minutes to complete. It is a blessing that the application lets you configure email alarms to be sent or popup messages to appear when a given SMART attribute is outside the recommended range.
In general, DiskCheckup does exactly what it says in the box, but just remember that the data shown will have little value unless you know what to do with them. There’s only thing I didn´t like about the application, and it's that it doesn't show the current HD temperature in the System Tray, as other similar tools do.
v3.3 [Feb 6, 2015]
Revision Author Date
v3.3 (1000) KM 3 Feb 2015
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1. Updated list of SMART attributes according to the specific drive model.
The set of SMART attributes to display is determined by performing a
regular expression comparison on the drive model.
2. SMART Info tab now contains an 'Info' icon which displays a
description of the SMART attribute when moused over. Each attribute
may also display an up or down icon to indicate whether a higher
or lower raw value is better.
3. SMART History tab now displays the raw value history.
4. A new 'Status' attribute is displayed in the Device Info tab which indicates
that a drive is "OK" unless:
a) < 10% disk space is available in any of the disk's volumes,
b) Disk temperature is higher than the threshold, or
c) 1 or more SMART value(s) have exceeded a threshold
5. Device Info tab now displays the disk's real-time activity. The refresh
interval can be configured in the Configuration window.
6. Fixed issue with dates being truncated in the exported report. Also removed errors appearing in the reports when no SMART history is available.
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