Additional information and tabs are provided at the bottom which display information about a hard drive’s work time, model, temperature and health status. The first tab which is the active tab after selecting a hard drive will display detailed basic information about the selected drive including serial number and the firmware version. The next two tabs contain information about the S.M.A.R.T. status of the active hard drive and a temperature graph that displays the hard drive’s temperature changes over time.

The fourth tab can be used to scan the selected hard drive for bad sectors. The very same menu offers to schedule disk scans. A viable alternative is Speedfan which combines all of the possibilities offered by Active Hard Disk Monitor with advanced information and options including the display of all relevant system temperatures and fan speeds. The information and options are however not presented that clearly as in Active Hard Disk Monitor.

Active Hard Disk Monitor is compatible with many Microsoft operating systems including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2008.

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SpeedFan is well known program in the category of system monitoring. It is a very good tool for controlling CPU and case fans (kinda obvious from its name) and was mentioned here on ghacks numerous times. However it has an interesting secondary function of analyzing hard drive health by reading and processing SMART data.

SMART (short for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is set of values that roughly expresses the amount of working time, load and errors hard drives have experienced since leaving the factory. Unfortunately for humans SMART is bunch of hexadecimal numbers that are hard to read and even harder to understand. In addition drive manufacturers are using different attributes and values that are not helping either.

Without leaving interface SpeedFan can show (on SMART tab) the values themselves and is trying to mark meaningful ones and calculate two indexes – performance and fitness:

• failing performance index means drive no longer performs its best;
• failing fitness index means drive is preparing to die with all your data.

Since one of the attributes is drive temperature SpeeFan can tie (as it can other temperatures) it to case fans speed and control airflow depending on its value.

Deeper and better analysis is hidden behind the "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk" button. It unchains you from local interface and submits data of your drive to hddstatus online service. In seconds your browser is forwarded to an automated report on your drive.

Why the need for an online service at all? Big advantage is that the online tool has access to SMART data of all hard drives of all models ever submitted to it. Instead of vaguely guessing it compares your drive with numerous similar drives and gives evaluation that fits exactly the hard drive model.

The report itself is formatted using understandable words like "good" and "not good" plus nice graphical bars showing how far your drive's values are from optimal ones. Interesting extra is the number of drives of that model tested and min/max/average temperatures for them. Sample report.

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