Hard drive diagnostic software:Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic is free hard drive testing software designed for Western Digital branded hard drives. Data Lifeguard Diagnostic will also run diagnostics on hard drives from other manufacturers as long as the primary drive is Western Digital.

The Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic software installs on Windows operating systems and allows for a number of hard drive tests. See the installation instructions from Western Digital in the link below for details.

Download: Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics

How to test a drive for problems using Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics?

How can you use Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to do the following:

  • Perform a quick test on a drive for problems
  • Get the serial number of a drive
  • Write zeros to a drive
  • Peform a full media scan on the drive for bad sectors

The Windows version of the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics utility can perform drive identification, diagnostics, and repairs on a Western Digital FireWire, EIDE, Serial ATA, and USB drive. In addition, it can provide you with the drive’s serial and model numbers.

To use the utility:

  1. Download Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. You may need to extract this using an extraction utiltiy such as WinZip.
  2. Run the program, windlg.exe. If you’re running this under Windows Vista, you will need to Right-click on the windlg.exe file and select Run As Administrator.
  3. Read and accept the license agreement to continue.
  4. On the main program screen, there are two windows. In the top window, you will see the drives in your system that are available for testing. The model number, serial number, and capacity of each drive will be displayed. In the bottom window, the partition information for the selected drive will be displayed.
  5. Double-click the drive to be tested in the top window.
  6. The DLGDIAG – Select an Option window appears.
  7. You will see the following options:

    QUICK TEST – performs SMART drive quick self-test to gather and verify the Data Lifeguard information contained on the drive.

    EXTENDED TEST – performs a Full Media Scan to detect bad sectors. Test may take several hours to complete depending on the size of the drive.

    WRITE ZEROS – writes zeros to the drive with options of Full Erase and Quick Erase. File system and data will be lost.

    VIEW TEST RESULT – displays the latest test results.

  8. Select the test you wish to perform and click the Start button.
  9. When the test completes, you will be notified. Click the Close button.
  10. A web page will display the test results for the drive.

Note: Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics will test internal hard drives contained within a WD My Book Premium II and WD My Book Pro Edition II storage system. The RAID Array on these units does not need to be broken in order to test the internal drives. The only feature that will not be available with the diagnostics is the SMART data. The diagnostics will not read SMART data from the drives.

Related Links:

  • Data Lifeguard Tools 11 and 10 error codes
  • Data Lifeguard Tools 2.8 error codes

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