Diagnostics and Optimization of Hard (HDD) and Solid-State (SSD) Drives

Every minute, SMARTHDD analyzes the condition of every disk in the system and notifies the user as soon as there is a risk of information loss or if any of the following is detected:

  • Pre-failure state of the data storage device
  • Data storage degradation
  • Non-critical parameters exceeding design limits
  • The temperature of a drive is above the recommended value

SMARTHDD evaluates disk performance, defragments file systems, and detects fake drives. The unique algorithm of the program detects the manufacturer of an SSD controller even for those SATA solid-state drives that are unknown to the program, which means the program can interpret S.M.A.R.T. attributes correctly in all cases.

The main window of the SMARTHDD programClick the image to view the expert mode.

SMARTHDD software allows for adjusting the characteristics of hard and solid-state drives by modifying the positioning speed of magnetic heads (AAM) and fine-tuning power consumption (APM).

Management of acoustic noise level and advanced power-saving mode

Equipped with S.M.A.R.T. technology, SMARTHDD invokes the built-in self-diagnosis of disk drives. Quick self-diagnosis checks electronic components and the drive head positioning system; this takes about 1-2 minutes. Complete self-diagnosis additionally checks the information storage, which could take up to several hours for high-capacity hard drives. The built-in self-diagnosis is performed by the drive itself completely in the background, and therefore it doesn't affect the performance of the computer. Storage analysis runs at the maximum possible speed of the drive, which means the test goes quickly even for those disks that are connected to the computer via slow interfaces like USB.

Diagnosing the hard and solid-state disks

SMARTHDD displays drive temperature in the taskbar notification area. To save screen space, the program can be configured to display the temperature of the drive generating the most heat only. If the temperature exceeds the maximum recommended by the manufacturer, the value turns red; otherwise, the program displays it in green. If the program cannot obtain the value of the maximum recommended temperature set by the manufacturer based on drive specifications, it uses 55°C (131°F) for HDD and 70°C (158°F) for SSD as the maximum.

Displaying the temperature of the hard drives in the Windows system notification area

SMARTHDD is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7-11 and consumes a minimal amount of RAM and CPU resources, without using third-party libraries other than WinAPI.