Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics - DLGDIAG for Windows
 

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

This MODULE of the Data Lifeguard Tools program searches for and verifies
the status of specific Western Digital drives. By accessing the Data Lifeguard
formation stored on the hard drive, the program is able to quickly and
efficiently verify the status of the drive. If any errors are logged or found,
it provides an option to return the drive to defect-free status through an 
extended test or repair option. DLGDIAG for Windows runs under Win9x/Me/NT/W2K/XP
and offers several options for verifying the defect-free status of your hard drive.


QUICK TEST:
The Quick Test is designed to intelligently gather and verify all of the Data
Lifeguard information contained on the drive. The Quick Test can determine with
a high level of confidence that a drive is defect-free in a short amount of time.
For maximum confidence, the Extended Test is recommended. The Quick Test option
may not be available on earlier IDE drives, SCSI drives and external drives.

The Quick Test will check the SMART status and perform SMART QUICK Drive Self-Test if 
SMART feature is supported and detected by the program, otherwise it will perform partial
disk scan test - 10% in OD zone and 10 in ID zone.
 

EXTENDED TEST:
For most computers the DLGDIAG Extended Test takes 30 minutes to hours to test
one drive. Larger drives take longer to test. The performance of the computer also
affects the test time. If a bad sector is detected under Win9x/Me environments,
the test may stop responding for a few minutes and then continue. This is not a 
destructive test unless users select repair function when bad sectors are detected.

The EXTENDED Test will scan the complete disk media from LBA #0 to the maximum LBA.
When a bad sector is detected, the user will be prompted to repair it. If the user
chooses to repair, the program will write zeros to the bad sector which will invoke
the drive firmware to reloate the bad sector and return the sector to defect free state.
 

WRITE ZEROS:
This option can be used to erase operating systems and file systems. The QUICK ERASE 
writes zeros to the first and last million of sectors and the FULL ERASE writes zeros 
to the entire drive and may take hours to complete depending on the drive size and 
system performance.
 

VIEW TEST RESULTS: The current test results can be displayed with this function. 
Test results will be overwritten once a new test is started.
 

TO RUN THE PROGRAM:
 
BACK UP DATA:
Before running DLGDIAG, it is recommended that users back up all data for all hard 
drives.  This utility may write to the drive during the re-certification process.  
As with all utilities that write to a drive, it is recommended that you back up your 
data before proceeding. 


TO TEST EACH DRIVE: 
Double click on one of the physical drives in the list to see the test menu. Select 
a test and click on Start button to start the test. At the end of the test a status 
is displayed.  For the EXTENDED TEST, if bad sectors are detected, a repair option 
will be provided to fix any correctable errors. However, data stored in the bad 
sectors will be lost, thus this function must be used very cautiously. WD also offers 
a DOS version of DLGDIAG which provides a better repair function. It can be downloaded 
from WD web site and used to repair certain errors that are not correctable under 
Windows environment. 
 

The SMART status is queried and displayed when the program starts. The SMART status 
can be PASS, FAIL or Not Available. Click on the SMART status column to see detailed 
SMART disk information. 
