Western Digital Failure Prevention and Data Protection Through Data Lifeguard free download

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Failure Prevention and Data Protection Through Data LifeguardTM Exclusive Feature Automatically Identifies and Repairs Hard Drive Sectors Before Data Loss Occurs Overview/Executive Summary Data LifeguardTM is a Western Digital exclusive feature that automatically detects, isolates and repairs problem areas on hard drives to prevent data loss. This proactive data- reliability feature improves hard drive performance through a continuous self-tuning process that performs scans and repairs while the hard drive is idle. It identifies defects that can result from component wear, and repairs or isolates them to protect the data. Data Lifeguard is both an enhancement and an extension to Western Digital's S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) System that monitors and predicts the performance of hard drives. When enabled, S.M.A.R.T. protects against system downtime and possible loss of productivity and data by communicating reliability status to the user. Data Lifeguard is always enabled, and works independently from S.M.A.R.T. to provide a self-tuning capability. The feature is incorporated in Western Digital's latest generation of high-performance Enhanced IDE (EIDE) hard drives--the WD Caviar AC13200, AC24300, AC26400, AC38400 and AC310100. Background Data that is stored on hard drives can represent vital company or individual records, important project information, essential client and employee records, critical tax informa- tion, historical records, graphics, etc. Risking the loss of such data that often takes years to accumulate is not a viable option in today's marketplace. Hard drives featuring the highest reliability are a vital imperative for every computer system user. Western Digital's exclusive new Data Lifeguard feature helps provide the utmost reliability attainable in preventing data loss on hard drives. Data Lifeguard is an advanced version of Western Digital's self-tuning feature that is performed during every off-line data collection scan. All user sectors on the hard drive are scanned during times of inactivity from the host. Sectors requiring extended retries to recover are rewritten and read back to ensure the storage integrity of the sector. If read back performed is still less than optimal, the sector will be relocated to a new good sector. Data Lifeguard is always actively guarding data, even if S.M.A.R.T. operations for monitoring and predicting hard drive performance are disabled. In S.M.A.R.T. technology's brief history, it has progressed through three versions. s S.M.A.R.T. I provides failure prediction by monitoring certain online hard drive activities. s S.M.A.R.T. II improves failure prediction by adding an automatic off-line read scan to monitor additional operations. s S.M.A.R.T. III not only monitors hard drive activities but adds failure prevention by attempting to detect and repair sector errors. Western Digital has implemented all three versions of the S.M.A.R.T. reliability mo