Universal automatic diagnostics software for both external an internal WD drives.

[#1]

I think that WD and its customers would benefit from a Unified automatic diagnostics tool running in the background and constantly checking and reporting back to the user the status of the drives in real time. Take an anti-virus as an example as it keeps scanning the computer and pops-up an alert if a threat is found.

Why? Because not everyone has the time, basic knowledge and software required to test a drive for errors, faults and overall health. Since you (WD) deal with a considerable amount of Customers that are not computer literate and don't know how to backup their files, it's best to note that such a tool would Decrease the volume of people who lose data because of not knowing or having an idea of overall drive health. If they are warned in time, then they could take the data out if they don't have a backup.

Additionally, having separate tools that are drive-specific does not help us customers. DLG does not work with most Smartware drives and when Smartware doesn't want to work then the customer is forced to look for other software since there are no more options from WD. Also, most casual consumers (You know it's a high number, just look here on the forums) would  not know how to run the test on their own, that's why it has be automatic and unified for internal and external drives. Make it a default tool, it could be useful for your Tech Support agents as well if it's accurate.

And lastly, the tool needs be user friendly while being able to provide support on its own. It needs to be able to identify and Differentiate between hardware problems and logical (firmware) problems to give the user an idea of what's wrong with the drive. For example, some times the drive's partition does not mount in Windows, not even on disk management and can't be used at all, yet, the drive tends to be listed on -device manager- on Windows when this happens. Letting the user know why this is happening (Or if could have been prevented) will prevent a lot of headaches in the future.

And lastly, the tool needs to translate the testing attributes in a way that even no-brainer would understand. Showing what are the test parameters and giving an "Estimated usable life expectancy" based on the tests that it's always checking and telling the user.

It doesn't have to be a new software, you could just improve DLG to add these features and of course, avoid the same software bloat problem that Smartware has. I understand that a software that runs in the background takes resources out, by my anti-virus NEVER peaks above 10% of CPU usage, so there's no excuse for bloating here... Specially since this software won't be copying files.

A big lot of consumers take your slogan "Put your life on it" quite literally, why not helping them keep their lives safe? What do you think?

[#2]

I'm in!!

I have a hard disk that doesn't seem's to be work any more, if i have this tool, I could identify the type of error my HDD would facing.

[#3]

 WD is in already a mid way to completing this tool for new WD customer as  i think.

This tools can greatly helps to monitor the hard drive and system for errors and can help users to recover from the data loss conditions as well.

Thanks for this awesome information.

Oliver