14 DAY TRIAL // Eavesdropping on your case for funny sounds caused by the hard disk does not exactly give you too much accuracy on the lifespan of the device. On the over hand, utilities such as Active@ Hard Disk Monitor, designed to read S.M.A.R.T. attributes and interpret them into health percentage can spare you of massive data loss disaster.
Reading and interpreting values relating to the health of your storage device(s) is the sole purpose of this application. Though it is quite insignificant, it does not come without a cost, though: $5.99 and it is yours with all the functions active. If you want to test its abilities, the developer offers a 14-day trial period with no locked features.
Installing Active@ Hard Disk Monitor is uneventful and the process does not take long either. You can choose the automatic procedure or opt for a personalized one that gives you the possibility to choose the components you want on your system.
If you go with the latter you will not receive any explanation about the purpose of the features you can exclude from installation; in some cases, though you can deduce their usage from their name. Also, there is no alert on the importance of the listed entries.
The interface may seem a bit crowded for some users as it is split into plenty of sections. But once you learn the purpose of each of them getting around is piece of cake. The details it makes available include the current temperature of the selected storage device, overall health status as well as S.M.A.R.T. readings.
However, this is not all you get as Active@ Hard Disk Monitor can also show basic information about the selected HDD, a temperature graph and scan it for bad blocks.
Details on the partitions composing a storage device are present in the interface as well. These inform you of the total size of each of the drives, their file system and amount of used space. The last bit of information is rendered both in percentage and graphical representation.
The basic information on the selected storage device includes disk model, serial number, firmware version, total capacity and number of volumes currently available. However, if you need more advanced bits of news, Active@ Hard Disk Monitor has it. These comprise data about cylinders, number of tracks on each of them, number of sectors per track and bits per sector.
The core of the application is the S.M.A.R.T. info window. This is where you get all internal values that predict an immediate disk failure or a worry-free future. For each attribute there is displayed the current value, the worst and raw one as well as the present status. If you click on one of them you’ll get a brief description and explanation at the bottom of the screen. The important thing, however, is to have all health status bars green, which are not available in all similar apps.
There were plenty of S.M.A.R.T. attributes available in the application, but in some cases Active@ Hard Disk Monitor did not manage to recognize them. The total number of unknown attributes was seven in our case, a pretty large number compared to what software of the same feather reported.
Still on the downside, the windows inside the main frame are not resizable, which makes their organization and viewing of the details a tad uncomfortable.
The program features a special section that shows the temperature history for the selected device. You can choose to view the variation for the current hour, the entire day or pick a range date and time. Both way, the screen is equipped with critical and warning thresholds (these are preset) to make it easier on you to interpret the values.
There is a special section in the application for revealing bad blocks on the disk. The settings at your disposal allow changing the blocks size, set the beginning and end sectors to be verified and create a schedule for the task to start automatically in the future.
If you take a gander in the “Preferences” screen, Active@ Hard Disk Monitor does not make available too many options. Except for picking the measurement unit for the temperature and enabling this info in the system tray, there isn’t much tweaking to be done.
The Good
The temperature graph provides good intel on the state of the disk over a longer period of time.
The Bad
The areas in the main application window cannot be resized for a more comfortable view at all the elements.
The Truth
The price is nothing one can’t afford and the fact that it also interprets the readings work to the advantage of less skilled computer users.
