Question How reliable is "WD Dashboard"?

[ditrate]

I regularly using this program because of speed and because is vendor specific software. How the "Extended S.M.A.R.T Test" is comparing to default surface scan or chkdsk?

 

[USAFRet]

For a storage device, the only reliable thing to use is a comprehensive, tested, automated backup plan.

If you wait for some software to tell you a drive is dying, you've waited too long.

 

[ditrate]

For a storage device, the only reliable thing to use is a comprehensive, tested, automated backup plan.

If you wait for some software to tell you a drive is dying, you've waited too long.

I not using hard drives for valuable things, I don't need a backup. Just want to control health of the drive

 

[fzabkar]

I would use HDDScan or Victoria for Windows to perform a surface scan. These tools will identify "slow" sectors, ie those sectors which require read retries. An extended SMART test won't show up these kinds of problems.

 

[MWink64]

I'll vouch for HDDScan. The detection of "slow" sectors can give you an idea if things may be headed south but not quite bad yet. My only complaint is that the OS or other programs may try to access the drive and cause false positives (for "slow" sectors). There's an old DOS program called MHDD that I really liked but it doesn't support SATA drives unless they are running in IDE mode (which most modern motherboards do not support). I'd love to find a Linux program with similar capabilities.

 

[USAFRet]

I not using hard drives for valuable things, I don't need a backup. Just want to control health of the drive

And a drive can die literally instantly.
No warning at all, no matter how often you scan, and with what.

 

[fzabkar]

I'll vouch for HDDScan. The detection of "slow" sectors can give you an idea if things may be headed south but not quite bad yet. My only complaint is that the OS or other programs may try to access the drive and cause false positives (for "slow" sectors). There's an old DOS program called MHDD that I really liked but it doesn't support SATA drives unless they are running in IDE mode (which most modern motherboards do not support). I'd love to find a Linux program with similar capabilities.

Have you tried Victoria for DOS? I don't know if it is able to see SATA drives natively, but it's potentially a better tool than MHDD.