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HD Workbench 1.0

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HD-Workbench has been released as freeware.
Use the following registration information:
Name: diydatarecovery
Code: 67200-6C480-7CC80-67200-64080-
          77A00-64080-75900-68280-CC3


Many PC users recognize the potential threat of data loss caused by viruses and take appropriate actions for protecting themselves against virus damage. Not many know however that 'only' about 7% of all data loss is caused by virus damage while hardware damage is responsible for 44% of all data loss!(*)

Now that you know, don't you think it's about time you start keeping an eye on your hard disk's health?

Use HD Workbench to:

# Monitor your hard disk's health using 'Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology' (S.M.A.R.T.)

S.M.A.R.T. is an early warning system that can warn you if your hard disk is about to fail (**). The early warning allows you to migrate your data to a 'known to be good' disk.

# Take proactive actions by scanning your disk on a regular basis. HD Workbench allows you to run quick tests, full read-only tests and full read/write tests. The full tests verify the entire disk's surface.

The read/write surface scan is non destructive, there is however one exception: in case 'bad' areas are detected HD Workbench will try to persuade the hard disk's internal error management to replace the bad areas with sectors from the spare sector pool. Data within the bad areas is lost.

# Use HD Workbench to 'evacuate' data from a potentially failing disk to a 'known to be good' disk by creating a sector by sector copy (including the MBR, partition tables and boot sectors), or by writing the data to a raw disk image file (***).

A RAW image file is in fact a sector-by-sector partition-copy stored in the file in raw format (that is, no compression and no skipped sectors)

HD Workbench features:
Monitor overall SMART status and the status of individual SMART attributes
Perform read-only or read/write surface scans
Reclaim bad sectors
Clone disks sector by sector
Create/restore raw image files
Mount raw image files
Check hard disk temperature
MBR backup/restore
Boot sector backup/restore
FAT, FAT32 and NTFS file system support
Easy integration to the Windows boot menu and safe mode environment

Requirements:
Windows 2000 or XP
SMART capable IDE/ATA hard disk
Administrative rights

Remarks:
* Source: Kroll/Ontrack
** Not all physical damage is predictable
*** A NTFS partition is required to receive the image file


About S.M.A.R.T.:

Disk behavior is captured and expressed through a number of attributes specific for each drive and model. The assumption is that certain behavior patterns can predict drive failures.

The algorithms to analyze and express a disk's behavior using a series of attributes and values assigned to those attributes are determined by the manufacturer. The disk manufacturer also determines the parameters (thresholds) for acceptable behavior. If any of the thresholds are exceeded the disk is probably failing. SMART enabled bioses and software that is able to interpret the SMART attribute values and thresholds can now warn the user.

A typical SMART attribute is initially assigned the value 100. When certain events occur a value is deducted from the initial value. By the time the value reaches the critical value (the threshold) a warning can be issued. A simple example is the Power_On_Hours_count: a disk doesn't have eternal life, for every number of hours a drive is running, 1 is deducted from the attribute value. At a certain point the attribute will reach the threshold value.

If you experience a S.M.A.R.T. alert when using your drive, you should immediately stop using it and contact your drive manufacturer's technical support department for instructions. Some companies consider a S.M.A.R.T. alert sufficient evidence that the drive is bad, and will immediately issue a RMA for its replacement; others require other steps to be performed, such as running the manufacturers diagnostic software on the disk. In no event should you ignore the alert.

Last Updated: April, 2004
Size: approx 2.5 Mb.
Host OS: Windows 2000/XP

HD Workbench #1

The main menu allows easy access to sub menus and dynamically provides you with the overall SMART status and temperature for all (SMART capable) disks.

HD Workbench #2

You can view all specific SMART attributes, their values and their thresholds.

HD Workbench #3

The imaging module cluster analysis map offers a quick overview of the locations of used vs. unused clusters. Defragmenting a volume may reduce image file sizes (when creating truncated image files).


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