Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics

Assessing the performance of a hard drive and diagnosing possible issues that may occur in its functioning is a highly specialized task that requires dedicated tools in order to get the job done properly.

Owners of Western Digital HDDs are fortunate enough to be able to use a program that is created particularly for these devices. It goes by the name of Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and can be deployed for testing the drives and viewing SMART data from supported models.

The plain and simple interface of the utility allows you to quickly select and start examining any of e connected drives. The information provided by Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics is rather basic, as it includes model and serial numbers, drive capacity and SMART current status.

If you want to run a couple of tests on the selected hard drive, you have to choose among 3 diagnostic modules. Thus, you can deploy the 'Quick Test' to activate a SMART drive self-test and check the Data Lifeguard information that is stored on the drive.

There is a more powerful type of scan you can perform, namely the 'Extended Test' that thoroughly checks for bad sectors through a full media scan. This type of task is most likely to go on for several hours on high-capacity HDDs.

The third tool you can use in Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics enables you to completely delete file system and data. It is called 'Write Zeros' and comes with two options, one for fully erasing the drive and the other triggers a quick erase procedure.

As a means of evaluating the hard drive functional parameters and investigating possible faults on the hardware part, Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics puts up a decent performance. Nonetheless, more advanced features would surely be welcomed since this program will only perform two tests and provide a simple drive wiping tool.