Western Digital HDD tools you may like...

[Ol Smoke]

Go to this website:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?level1=6&lang=en

 

If you have WD harddrives in your system you have access to some good software to backup and clean your HDD.

First, you will need to find the type of drive you have by using the Device Manager in XP.  (It may be different in Vista and 7)

Click on Disk Drives and your HDD will show up with the model number displayed.  Write it down or just remember it. Then go to

the website above and find your harddrive on here by holding your mouse pointer over the HDD picture.  When the model number

matches yours, then download the software.

 

One of the downloads will be for testing your harddrive called Data LifeGuard.  This will test the hardware of the drive to make sure

there are no bad sectors or damage to your drive.

The other software download is Acronis.  It will backup and save your data by making images of the harddrive.   It will clone, and

restore your drive if you need it.

 

I recommend runny the Data Lifeguard every six months or so, just to keep the HDD in good shape.  You never know when you have

written important data across a bad sector that is not listed in the bad sector section of your harddrive.  This will find that data, restore it

and then write it to a good sector.  If it can, it will restore that bad sector or put it in the list so it can't be written to.

 

There are good manuals on these two software products so read them if you need to learn more.

 

I only use WD products so I don't know if other HDD manufacturers are using similar software.  Just check out their websites.

 

 

[UAdave]

Another I've found useful is for networked external drives called WDLink. I had a bunch a drives at work around the network. This tool will go out, find them all, and report their stats back.