5
Managing and Customizing the Drive
This chapter includes the following topics:
Checking Drive Health
Safely Disconnecting the Drive
Erasing the Drive
Registering the Drive
Restoring the WD Software
The WD Discovery software makes it easy for you to manage and customize your
drive for the best possible performance:
▪ Diagnose—Run diagnostics and status checks to make sure your drive is working
properly.
▪ Sleep Timer—Reduces power to your drive during extended periods of inactivity
to conserve power and extend the life of the drive.
▪ Drive Erase—Erase all of the data on the drive.
▪ About—See the installed software version, check for software updates, and
register your drive to receive free technical support during the warranty period
and
find
out about product enhancements and price discount opportunities.
Checking Drive Health
The WD Drive Utilities software provides three diagnostic tools to help make sure that your
drive is performing well. Run the following tests if you are concerned that your drive is not
operating properly:
▪ Drive status check
The drive status check is a failure-prediction function that continuously monitors key
internal performance attributes of the drive. A detected increase in drive temperature,
noise, or read/write errors, for example, can provide an indication that the drive is
approaching a serious failure condition. With advanced warning, you could take
precautionary measures, like moving your data to another drive, before a failure occurs.
The result of a drive status check is a pass or fail evaluation of the drive’s condition.
▪ Quick drive test
Your drive has a built-in Data Lifeguard
™
diagnostic utility that tests the drive for error
conditions. The quick drive test checks the drive for major performance problems.
The result of a quick drive test is a pass or fail evaluation of the drive’s condition.
▪ Complete drive test
The most comprehensive drive diagnostic is the complete drive test. It tests every sector
for error conditions and inserts bad sector markers as required.
It is best to run the drive diagnostics and status checks on a regular basis, before you
encounter any problems with your drive. And, because they are so fast, running the drive
status check and the quick drive test provides a high level of assurance with minimal
inconvenience. Then, run all three whenever you encounter disk error conditions when
writing or accessing
files.
1. There are two ways to run WD Drive Utilities:
Managing and Customizing the Drive
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User Manual
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