Checking drive health

The WD Drive Utilities™ software provides three diagnostic tools to help make sure that your drive is performing well. Run the following tests if you are concerned that your drive is not operating properly:

• Drive status check

  The drive status check is a failure-prediction function that continuously monitors key internal performance attributes of the drive. A detected increase in drive temperature, noise, or read/write errors, for example, can provide an indication that the drive is approaching a serious failure condition. With advanced warning, you could take precautionary measures, like moving your data to another drive, before a failure occurs.

  The result of a drive status check is a pass or fail evaluation of the drive's condition.

• Quick drive test

  Your supported drive has a built-in Data Lifeguard™ diagnostic utility that tests the drive for error conditions. The quick drive test checks the drive for major performance problems.

  The result of a quick drive test is a pass or fail evaluation of the drive's condition.

• Complete drive test

  The most comprehensive drive diagnostic is the complete drive test. It checks every sector for error conditions, and inserts bad sector markers as required.

1. If you have more than one supported device connected to your computer, select the one that you want to check.
2. Click Diagnose to display the diagnostics dialog.
3. On the diagnostics dialog, click the button for the test that you want to run:
   • Run Drive Status Check
   • Run Quick Drive Test
   • Run Complete Drive Test

Note: You do not have to wait for the drive test to complete. If you want to run drive diagnostics and status checks on another drive, just select the drive and the test you want to run.

See also:

• About the WD Drive Utilities software
• Registering the drive
• Setting the drive sleep timer
• Managing the RAID configuration
• Erasing the drive