Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows is a simple, free tool from Western Digital that displays the model, serial number, partitions, capacity, and S.M.A.R.T. data of any Western Digital hard disk drives that support Data Lifeguard that are attached to your system. It can also test your disks and display the results.

We extracted and clicked the executable file, and the program quickly opened and scanned our system, displaying our three WD physical drives in the upper view and the logical drives by letter in the lower view. We could initiate a test or view S.M.A.R.T. data by clicking a small icon. We selected a disk for testing, which consisted of three options: Quick Test, which verifies Data Lifeguard information; Extended Test, which performs a Full Media Scan and can take hours on a large drive; and Write Zeros, which essentially erases the drive by overwriting the data with zeroes. Another control displays test results. We selected Quick Test, pressed Start, and a pop-up warning advised us to close any open files and programs on the drive to prevent data loss. We clicked OK to proceed, and the program displayed a small pop-up with a progress bar, an estimated time of 2 minutes, and an Elapsed Time counter, which showed 1:57 when the test finished, beating the estimate by three seconds. Clicking a drive’s entry under S.M.A.R.T. called up its S.M.A.R.T. data. Clicking Help called up a typically clean and concise WD documentation sheet. Other than a Web link and Close button, that’s about it.

Western Digital is one of the major suppliers of hard drives to the computer industry, and a lot of WD drives are spinning away as we speak. If you use WD drives, either in desktop or laptop or Blue, Green, or Black, Data Lifeguard Diagnostic can help you keep them spinning happily for many years.