SMART Utility 2.2

Volitans software has announced the release of SMART Utility 2.2, a significant update to the hard drive diagnostic application. The new features include saving and opening SMART drive reports, printing reports, and better support for SSDs.

SMART Utility is an application to scan the internal hardware diagnostics system of hard drives SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is a system built into hard drives by their manufacturers to report on various measurements (called attributes) of a hard drive's operation. The attributes can be used to detect when a hard drive is having mechanical or electrical problems, and can indicate when the hard drive is failing. SMART Utility can read and display these attributes. This allows time to hopefully backup, and then replace the drive.

SMART Utility is different from other drive utilities, such as Disk Utility, which only read the overall SMART Status. SMART Utility not only displays the individual attributes to see their status and information, but it also uses an internal algorithm based on those attributes to detect drives failing before SMART indicates it has failed. This pre-fail detection can save precious data before SMART has determined that the drive has failed. And, while the raw information can be viewed on the command line with smartmontools (which is what SMART Utility is based on), SMART Utility presents it in an easy to read format, as well as running its internal pre-fail algorithm.


Full release notes for Version 2.2:
* Added support for saving and opening drive reports in native format
* Added support for printing SMART reports
* Fixed bug where scanning capabilities that would cause an error
* Fixed bug where in rare cases scanning SMART data would cause a crash
* Improved debug log formatting
* Moved log files to a subfolder
* Now log window updates live
* Updated smartctl engine to 5.39 providing more fixes and recognizes more drives, including SSDs
* Updated eSellerate embedded engine to 4.0.0.7

Features:
* Displays all supported drives and their partitions
* Displays easy to read overall SMART status with color coded text
* Displays important information in the main window, such as drive model, capacity, power on hours, temperature, bad sector counts, and error counts and types
* Displays more detailed information in separate windows, including capabilities, all available attributes, and the past five errors
* Run scan every hour, day, or week
* Run built in drive self tests
* Customize failing triggers
* Print drive reports
* Save and open drive reports
* Supports scanning individual RAID drives in addition to non-RAIDed drives
* Supports logging all information to a log file for verifying SMART data
* Supports Mac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5, and 10.6 as well as both PowerPC and Intel Macs

Pricing and Availability:
SMART Utility is available in a variety of licenses including a personal license for $25 (USD) and a family license for $40 (USD). It can be purchased online or in an innovative way: within SMART Utility itself through its embedded web store.


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