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. 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 a defect-free state through an Extended Test repair option. WinDlg runs on Windows 7 and later (including Win8, Win8.1, and Win10) and offers several options for verifying the defect-free status of your Western Digital drive.

QUICK TEST: The Quick Test can determine in a short amount of time and with a high level of confidence that a drive is defect-free. 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 checks a drive's SMART status and performs a SMART Quick Drive Self-Test if the SMART feature is supported by the drive and detected by the program. If the drive does not support the SMART feature, a partial disk scan test is performed instead of a SMART Quick Drive Self-Test. In this case, the scan reads 10% from the OD (Outer Diameter) zone and 10% from the ID (Inner Diameter) zone. I/O operations are confined to the first and last 2 million sectors in the ID and OD to limit the amount of time that this operation requires on large capacity drives.

EXTENDED TEST: For most computers, the Extended Test takes anywhere from 30 minutes to many hours to test one drive. Larger drives take longer to test and the performance of the computer affects the test time. If a bad sector is detected, the test may stop responding for a few minutes and then continue. By default, the Extended Test is a non-destructive test. This test is destructive only when you select the repair option after bad sectors are detected.

The Extended Test scans the entire disk media from LBA #0 to the maximum LBA. When a bad sector is detected, you are prompted to repair it. If you choose to repair the sector, the program writes zeros to the bad sector; this causes the drive firmware to relocate the bad sector and return the sector to a defect-free state.

ERASE: Erasing data renders the data inaccessible. This option can be used to erase operating systems and file systems. QUICK ERASE erases the first and last 10% of a drive's sectors or the first and last 1 million sectors (whichever is smaller). FULL ERASE erases the entire drive and may take hours to complete (depending on the drive size and system performance).

VIEW TEST RESULTS: This function displays recent test results.

TO RUN THE PROGRAM:

BACK UP DATA:

Before running WinDlg, it is highly recommended that you back up all data for all drives. WinDlg 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 display the test menu. Select a test and click the 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 allows you to fix any correctable errors. However, when you choose this repair option, data stored in the bad sectors will be lost; thus, this function must be used very cautiously. WD offers a DOS version of DLGDIAG which provides a better repair function. It can be downloaded from WD's web site and used to repair certain errors that cannot be corrected in the Windows environment.

The drive's 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 view detailed SMART disk information. Some drives (e.g., SAS - Serial Attached SCSI) do not return SMART data, so "Not Available" will be displayed in the SMART Status column (this is expected and is not an error).

TO UNINSTALL THE PROGRAM:

Use Control Panel 'Add/Remove Programs' or 'Programs and Features' to remove the WinDlg installation.

TO CONTACT WD:

You may contact Western Digital Technical Support at support.wdc.com or at (800) 275-4932 in the U.S., or (31) 20.446.7651 in Europe, or consult your drive manual for further information. Alternately, you may contact the OEM or its warranty service provider who can support your needs.