Users Guide

Figure 123. Recovery key in Notepad
Troubleshooting hard disk failure issues
If a disk failure error message is displayed, your hard drive is experiencing critical errors, and the erase process cannot be
completed successfully. It is recommended that you back up all important data, and contact your vendor for possible options to
replace the drive as soon as possible.
Data Assistant uses a utility that is called Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) to check the health
of the drive.
S.M.A.R.T. is a monitoring tool that is built into most of modern disk drives, such as HDDs, SSDs, eMMC drives, and so on.
The primary function of S.M.A.R.T. is to detect and report various indicators of drive reliability with the intent of anticipating
imminent hardware failures. By checking the value of parameters, the health status of a drive can be determined.
Data Assistant uses this S.M.A.R.T. information to prompt you when the drive health is likely to cause a failure during erase.
Figure 124. Hard disk failure
Since S.M.A.R.T. failures are hardware level issues, there are limited resolution options available:
● Perform the following steps to check for any errors, and repair the drives present on your system:
1. Open File Explorer, and on the left pane, click This PC.
2. Right-click any drive. For example, C:.
3. Click Tools, and click Check.
Data Erase
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