Active@ Hard Disk Monitor User Guide
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Contents 1.0 Product Overview ............................................................................................................. 4 1.1 About Active@ Hard Disk Monitor.................................................................................. 4 1.2 Requirements .............................................................................................................. 5 1.3 Downloading and installing .........................................................................................
1.0 Product Overview This chapter gives an overview of Active@ Hard Disk Monitor. 1.1 About Active@ Hard Disk Monitor Active@ Hard Disk Monitor – a disk utility that checks and monitors the reliability status of your hard drives to help prevent data loss due to hard drive failure. The system uses S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) monitoring which is based on the fact that hard drive failure due to mechanical wear happens over time.
1.0 Product Overview 1.2 Requirements Active@ Hard Disk Monitor works on a vast number of Windows platforms. Its easy-to-use intuitive design makes disk monitoring an easy task.
disk monitoring pool with a number of networked hosts, you may select any of these to view information about them. The SMART Info tab is selected and attributes for the selected hard disk appear in the right pane. To see a description of an attribute, select it. A description of the selected attribute appears in the Description panel. The bottom pane displays the following: · Disk Status – Overall calculated status of the health of the selected hard disk.
2.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor The application monitors all connected hosts continuously. You may turn monitoring for a host off or on manually. To turn host’s monitoring off or on: 1. Right-click a host in the monitoring pool. 2. To turn monitoring off, select Monitoring > Off from the context menu. 3. To turn monitoring on, select Monitoring > On from the context menu. 2.1 Viewing hard disk information You may view detailed information about each local hard disk. To view hard disk information: 1.
2.2 Setting preferences for Disk Monitor Variable settings allow you to control the behavior and appearance of the application for each device in the monitoring pool. Settings that you make here affect the monitoring of all devices in the monitoring pool. To set preferences: 1. Click Preferences. The Preferences dialog box appears. 2.
2.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor · To display the running temperature of a hard disk in the system tray, select the Show Temperature in Tray check box and select the hard disk for which you want to display the temperature. · To display the Active@ Hard Disk Monitor status icon in the system tray, clear the Show Temperature in Tray check box. 3.
2.3 Scanning a disk In Active@ Hard Disk Monitor, the Scan Disk procedure allows you to detect bad blocks located on the drive. You may perform a disk scan simultaneously on several disks. If a bad block is found, details of the bad block are displayed with information down to the sector level layout. To scan a disk: 1. Select the Scan Disk tab. The Scan Disk workspace appears. 2. Click a hard drive to select it. The number of blocks in the workspace changes to reflect the size of the selected drive. 3.
2.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor You can specify disk scan schedule: Daily Scan, Weekly Scan, Scan Once. At the specified time your hard disk will be scanned and disk errors (if detected) will be reported to the Event Log (PROFESSIONAL version only). 2.4 Viewing the Event log You can view all events happening on all local drives in the Event log. To view the Event log: 1. Click a hard disk in the monitoring pool to select it. 2. Select the Event log tab.
To view the Temperature Graph: 1. Click either a hard disk, or the host being added to the monitoring pool. 2. Select the Temperature Graph tab. A graph for a single hard drive, or the list of host’s hard drives appears. 3. To view temperature graph for the different period, change the monitoring scale at the bottom of the graph. In PROFESSIONAL version you can view temperature changes history for more than one day period back in time.
3.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor Remote Services As a network administrator, with proper licensing, you can monitor the hard disk in local network and remote network computers. You can display disk status and information in the Active@ Hard Disk Monitor workspace and receive notifications when S.M.A.R.T. monitoring detects a value beyond the specified threshold. Free version allows you to monitor the only one machine, either local or remote. 3.
3. Enter the node communication port value in the Port scrolling field. 4. Click Add. The added network host appears in the monitoring pool. Figure 3-2 Connect to another computer dialog box 3.2 Viewing network host status You may view detailed information about each network host. To view network host information: 1. Click a network host in the monitoring pool to select it. 2. In the right pane select the Basic Info tab. Detailed information about the selected network host appears.
3.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor Remote Services · Check period displays how much time (in seconds) between data polls to this network host. · SMART Check period displays how much time (in seconds) the network host takes to collect SMART data from all hard disks connected locally to it. · Free space check period displays how much time (in seconds) the network host takes to assess used and free disk space on all hard disks connected locally.
2. In the General Settings area, do the following: · To start monitoring the selected hard disk each time Windows starts, select the Enable at Windows startup check box. · To display the running temperature of a hard disk in the system tray, select Show Temperature in the System Tray and select the hard disk for which you want to display the temperature. · To display the Active@ Hard Disk Monitor status icon in the system tray, select Show Status in the System Tray. 3.
3.0 Using Active@ Hard Disk Monitor Remote Services · To change the Warning and Critical temperature threshold values, use the spinner controls to a different value. · To record all hard drive monitoring activities into the system event log, select the Log Info into System Eventlog check box. · To turn monitoring for this network host off, clear the Monitoring check box. To turn monitoring on, select the Monitoring check box.
· In From, type the email address used by the network host administrator. · In To, type the destination email address where you want the message sent. · To use your existing email service provider, do the following: · In Server Name, type the outgoing mail server (SMTP) address in the format “servername.hostname.extension”. This is the mail server that will accept the notification email message from the application and forward it to the destination email address.
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3.5 Viewing the Administrator Event log You can view all events happening on all network hosts. To view the Event log: 1. Click a network host in the monitoring pool to select it. 2. Select the Event log tab. A list of events for the selected network host appears. Figure 3-4 Event log 3.6 Windows Service and Firewall Configurator For Active@ Hard Disk Monitor to monitor remote hosts, you need to configure firewall and polling settings on the remote host’s side. Start Service Configurator in either way: 1.
Figure 3-5 Service Configurator Specify the following parameters for the remote host: 1. S.M.A.R.T. polling period (in minutes) – how often monitoring service on the remote host will poll the S.M.A.R.T. information 2. Free space polling (in minutes) - how often monitoring service on the remote host will ask the Operating System about the free space available on drives 3. Port – TCP/IP port will be used by the monitoring service. Click Apply button to save changes in service configuration.
4.0 About S.M.A.R.T. monitoring Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T. is a monitoring system for computer hard disks. Use it to detect and report on various reliability factors. When you know more information about your hard drive, it may assist you in anticipating hard drive failure. The purpose of S.M.A.R.T. is to warn you about impending drive failure while there is still time to take preventative action – such as copying data to a replacement device.
With this in mind, if you monitor hard disk devices constantly, you can accurately determine the current operating health of your devices and – after you receive a warning – take the necessary steps to prevent data loss. Work at Google on over 100,000 drives has shown little overall predictive value of S.M.A.R.T. status monitoring as a whole. At the same time, in certain subcategories of performance monitoring, S.M.A.R.T. implementations do correlate with actual failure rates.
each case, device parameters could be checked only by the proprietary utility supplied by the manufacturer. In 1995, a group of leading disk manufacturers, including IBM and Compaq, produced a jointly-developed standard of predicting device failure which they called S.M.A.R.T. Although S.M.A.R.T. is an industry standard among most major hard disk manufacturers, there is still a need for industry-wide software and hardware standards for S.M.A.R.T. data interchange.
4.4 Attributes The table in this section should be regarded as a general reference only. Attributes and threshold values for any given hard disk drive are determined by the drive manufacturer. Each attribute has a raw value (displayed in Hexadecimal format) – the meaning of which is up to the manufacturer – and a normalized value that ranges between 1 and 253 (1 representing the worst value and 253 representing the best).
Table 3-1 Some S.M.A.R.T. Attributes showing a typical description of their raw values ID Hex 01 01 Read Error Rate Rate of hardware read errors that occurred when reading data from a disk surface. Any number above 0 indicates a problem with either disk surface or read/write heads. 02 02 Throughput Performance Overall (general) throughput performance of a hard disk drive. If the value of this attribute is decreasing there is a high probability that there is a problem with the disk.
ID Hex Attribute name Better Description (POH) this attribute shows total count of hours (or minutes, or seconds, depending on manufacturer) in power-on state. 10 0A Spin Retry Count Count of retry of spin start attempts. This attribute stores a total count of the spin start attempts to reach the fully operational speed under the condition that the first attempt was unsuccessful). An increase of this attribute value is a sign of problems in the hard disk mechanical subsystem.
ID Hex Attribute name Better Description 194 C2 Temperature Current internal temperature. 195 C3 Hardware ECC Recovered Amount of time between ECC-related (ErrorCorrecting-Code) errors. 196 C4 Reallocation Event Count Count of remap operations. The raw value of this attribute shows the total number of attempts to transfer data from reallocated sectors to a spare area. Both successful and unsuccessful attempts are counted.
ID Hex Attribute name Better Description specific. 203 CB Run Out Cancel Frequency of ECC (Error Correction Code) errors. 204 CC Soft ECC Correction Number of errors corrected by software ECC 205 CD Thermal Asperity Rate (TAR) Number of TA (thermal asperity) errors. A TA event is a read error caused by temperature rise due to head contact with contaminant particles. Can render data unreadable for a short period of time.
ID Hex Attribute name Better Description ? Total time the heads are in the data zone. (time not spent in parking area). 226 E2 Load-in Time 227 E3 Torque Amplification Count Number of attempts to increase platter speed to compensate for speed variations. 228 E4 Power-Off Retract Cycle Number of times the magnetic armature was retracted automatically as a result of cutting power.
