A few days ago a friend started to have some problems with his laptop as it randomly  does not detect the hard disk. The usual suspects would be a hard disk failure or IDE cable or IDE controller problem. On a desktop it is easy to check the IDE cable or the IDE controller just by testing with a different cable or just by connecting the hard disk on a different IDE but since it has problems with his laptop he can not do these checks so he’s only option was to run some tests to check if his hard disk is failing and hope it is not  the IDE controller on the motherboard.  Normally for this operation I prefer using software developed by the hard disk manufacturer. So I recommended my friend to grab the Hitachi Disk Fitness Tool and run the advanced tests.

One easy thing is that you can check the S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) attributes of the hard disk and base on their values and the threshold values you can predict an upcoming failure. Checking the tools for Hitachi drives I discovered they have discontinued  SMART Defender and they recommend using third party software. Since they do not specify any particular toolI will mention three of them Hddscan, DisckChekup and Active Smart.

DisckChekup is free for personal use, while Active Smart can be bought for 23.95$. Both tools allow you to monitor a S.M.A.R.T. capable hard disk in real time, including the hard disk temperature and alert you when a threshold value for a critical attribute is reached. Active Smart features a nicer user interface and based on the previous it values can simulate the evolution of each S.M.A.R.T attribute and estimate a fail date.

Hddscan is a free windows utility from that lets you read the S.M.A.R.T attributes and test your hard disk for problems.