Active@ Hard Disk Monitor

Ok after knowing the functions of S.M.A.R.T. TECHNOLOGY, we moved on to discuss the following software that i found it to be useful ;

Active@ Hard Disk Monitor is a Freeware disk utility that checks and monitors your hard drives health status to enable user to backup their harddisks and help to prevent data loss. It allows user to detect bad sectors on a disk surface. The software can be launched automatically at Windows startup and monitor the system in the background. An icon in the System Tray can display the temperature for selected HDDs.

Surf to the homepage to know more about the functions and features it does. The Freeware version can be downloaded from the following link ; Active Hard Disk Monitor

Click on above image to enlarge It shows the application's interface and the information of the current disks.

The top-left pane has Hard Disk Drives listed. You can view S.M.A.R.T. attributes for the currently high-lighted HDD on the top-right pane. Clicking by individual S.M.A.R.T. attribute shows its description.
The bottom-left pane displays the overall status of the HDD’s health. The current Hard Disk temperature is displayed in the bottom-center pane with a temperature gage. Volumes located on a HDD are displayed on the bottom-right pane, as well as essential volume information. The time of last disk information poll is also displayed.

What this software impresses me is that it shows the current individual disk temperature in the System Tray and it also indicate how long your respective disks has been working since installed on your system !!!

It's actually shows that my SAMSUNG HD has been working for 9days 3hours (219hours) Temperture @ 36°C. Health Status ; 100%

It's shows that my MAXTOR HD has been working for 1month 2days 22hours (790hours) Temperture @ 44°C. Health Status ; 80%

It's shows that my HITACHI HD has been working for 1year 5months 25days 18hours (12978hours).Temperture @ 45°C.

Health Status ; 57%

Source from Storagereview.com conclude that :

Samsung's SpinPoint T166 delivers excellent performance that represent the
everyday performance a drive in a typical desktop system may encounter. The
T166 is a whisper-quiet drive, SpinPoint T166 delivers a great combination
of productivity performance, quiet operation, and power economy.

Considering the fact that this drive was released back in 2006, I find it very positive that this drive only has 2 platters, minimizing the risk of a hard disk crash and thereby data loss.

It seem like the Samsung SpinSpoint T166 series is a better harddisk to invest due to the harddisk temperture being monitor... Till date it never passes the 40°C, which shows it could maintain at a lower safe temperture as compare to the other 2 disk. Might be a better option for playing games and doing graphics intensive application on the harddisk.

Now the Spinpoint F1 add to the lastest flagships on SAMSUNG harddisk series.

OK, now back on the tropic again,

Active@ Hard Disk Monitor is a realtime hard drive diagnostic software. It utilizes the S.M.A.R.T. technology to track the status of the computer hard disks. Its main goal is timely detecting and anticipating any problems, occurring with the disk, before the danger of the data loss appears.

And even more - with Active@ Hard Disk Monitor you can check how old is your hard drive, how many read or write errors it collected, change the drive power mode or noise level and more..

Install Active@ Hard Disk Monitor to protect yourself from a possible data loss in case of an unexpected disk failure.