SMART disk utilities
_I just downloaded a copy of [ActiveSMART](http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/) after my BIOS told me to replace my HDD on my desktop computer. The only reason I noticed this was because I had to replace the power supply in my desktop._ > > ... > > _I found that this utility does a great job of telling me exactly what my HDD's are up to on my computer. It also helps to demystify for me exactly what S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics actually are. I've also got it set up to email me alerts if one of my computer's HDD's are about to go south (it polls your HDD's diagnostics every hour). It's well worth the $24.95._ [[iunknown.com](http://www.iunknown.com/000280.html)] > >
I’m running SMART Defender which I got from IBM (apparently they recently sold their hard drive business to Hitachi so you get it there now). It’s a free download and it says it monitors SMART-capable IDE and SCSI hard drives so presumably it works with other makes too. I don’t know if it works - I hope I don’t find out, but it is reporting a healthy status on my disk at the moment. See http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#smart.