winDLG alternative for 64 bit systems

S

sobriquet

Hi.

I have several WD mybook essential USB drives and I'd like to check
them on my 64 bit vista system.
So I've downloaded winDLG from the WD website, but somehow I can't
check my drive using that program.
Chdk from windows finds bad clusters on one of the drives, so now I'm
worried about the other drives and
it takes very long to check them.
When I run winDLG, it doesn't seem to recognize any physical drives
(just logical volumes), and hence I can't check a specific physical
drive.

Is there an alternative program similar to winDLG that will allow me
to check external USB drives without logging off the system?

Greetings and thanks in advance for any suggestions, Niek
 
S

sobriquet

Hi.

I have several WD mybook essential USB drives and I'd like to check
them on my 64 bit vista system.
So I've downloaded winDLG from the WD website, but somehow I can't
check my drive using that program.
Chdk from windows finds bad clusters on one of the drives, so now I'm
worried about the other drives and
it takes very long to check them.
When I run winDLG, it doesn't seem to recognize any physical drives
(just logical volumes), and hence I can't check a specific physical
drive.

Is there an alternative program similar to winDLG that will allow me
to check external USB drives without logging off the system?

Greetings and thanks in advance for any suggestions, Niek
Click to expand...

Oh, I see the problem was most likely that I didn't run the program in
administrator mode under vista.

But I've tried it out with multiple computers, multiple cables and
multiple external drives, and I get a "Cable Test::Write sector
error!" just about every time under vista.
This happens on at least 3 different vista computers, but the problem
doesn't seem to occur under xp.

Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics, v. 1.17.

I have bad sectors on a My Book Essential Edition 2.0 (2 TB) drive,
less than half a year old. So I thought it was a good idea to check
all my WD USB drives.
 
Y

Yousuf Khan

sobriquet said:
Hi.

I have several WD mybook essential USB drives and I'd like to check
them on my 64 bit vista system.
So I've downloaded winDLG from the WD website, but somehow I can't
check my drive using that program.
Chdk from windows finds bad clusters on one of the drives, so now I'm
worried about the other drives and
it takes very long to check them.
When I run winDLG, it doesn't seem to recognize any physical drives
(just logical volumes), and hence I can't check a specific physical
drive.

Is there an alternative program similar to winDLG that will allow me
to check external USB drives without logging off the system?

Greetings and thanks in advance for any suggestions, Niek
Click to expand...

I found that HDSentinel usually works with most USB-connected external
drives, and I specifically tested it with a friend's WD Mybook 500GB. I
just don't know if HDSentinel has a 64-bit version or not, I would
assume it does. Ah I see by the system requirements page that it does
support 64-bit Vista:

Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring
http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel.php?page=requirements

Yousuf Khan
 
S

sobriquet

I found that HDSentinel usually works with most USB-connected external
drives, and I specifically tested it with a friend's WD Mybook 500GB. I
just don't know if HDSentinel has a 64-bit version or not, I would
assume it does. Ah I see by the system requirements page that it does
support 64-bit Vista:

Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoringhttp://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel.php?page=requirements

        Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-I...8;jsessionid=CF30CF9E228CDB6C32E9C3970A5ECCDA

Seems like it's a common problem. The WD diagnostics software is
supposedly compatible with vista (both 32 and 64 bit), according to
its documentation (online pdf).

I was thinking perhaps I should try seatools first as an alternative
diagnostics utility, as it's affiliated with a major brand of
harddisks (seagate)

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=552bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD
 
A

Arno

Looks good, looks like it's another tool that can read SMART over USB
or Firewire, HD Sentinel also does that.
Click to expand...
Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...

Seems the smartmontools people are also starting to add some USB
chipset specific SMART command passthroughs. Interesting.

HDDsentinel has more, but in the end it only matters whether
your devices work. Also good to know that the standard way
(SAT) seems to gain traction, which should eventually eleminate
the problem.

Arno
 
A

Arno

Seems the smartmontools people are also starting to add some USB
chipset specific SMART command passthroughs. Interesting.
Click to expand...
HDDsentinel has more, but in the end it only matters whether
your devices work. Also good to know that the standard way
(SAT) seems to gain traction, which should eventually eleminate
the problem.
Click to expand...

Nice! My WD elements externals work without parameters
with smartmontools 5.39.1. This is an older "silver"
1TB one and newer "black" 1TB one. An 1.5TB WD mybook
also works.

Arno
 
S

sobriquet

I found that HDSentinel usually works with most USB-connected external
drives, and I specifically tested it with a friend's WD Mybook 500GB. I
just don't know if HDSentinel has a 64-bit version or not, I would
assume it does. Ah I see by the system requirements page that it does
support 64-bit Vista:

Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoringhttp://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel.php?page=requirements

        Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...

The unregistered version of HD Sentinel is pretty much useless and the
cracked edition of version 3 isn't available on demonoid yet.

Seatools is much better. You can even select multiple drives and do a
short or extensive drive test on multiple drives.

But it's very weird that a reputable company like WD doesn't even have
a decent software equivalent for seatools that actually works under
vista (the data lifeguard diagnostics).
Though DLG does seem to work ok under xp.. but that's no excuse for
lack of support under vista.
 

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