I think that WD and its customers would benefit from a Unified automatic diagnostics tool running in the background and constantly checking and reporting back to the user the status of the drives in real time. Take an anti-virus as an example as it keeps scanning the computer and pops-up an alert if a threat is found.
Why? Because not everyone has the time, basic knowledge and software required to test a drive for errors, faults and overall health. Since you (WD) deal with a considerable amount of Customers that are not computer literate and donât know how to backup their files, itâs best to note that such a tool would Decrease the volume of people who lose data because of not knowing or having an idea of overall drive health. If they are warned in time, then they could take the data out if they donât have a backup.
Additionally, having separate tools that are drive-specific does not help us customers. DLG does not work with most Smartware drives and when Smartware doesnât want to work then the customer is forced to look for other software since there are no more options from WD. Also, most casual consumers (You know itâs a high number, just look here on the forums) would not know how to run the test on their own, thatâs why it has be automatic and unified for internal and external drives. Make it a default tool, it could be useful for your Tech Support agents as well if itâs accurate.
And lastly, the tool needs be user friendly while being able to provide support on its own. It needs to be able to identify and Differentiate between hardware problems and logical (firmware) problems to give the user an idea of whatâs wrong with the drive. For example, some times the driveâs partition does not mount in Windows, not even on disk management and canât be used at all, yet, the drive tends to be listed on -device manager- on Windows when this happens. Letting the user know why this is happening (Or if could have been prevented) will prevent a lot of headaches in the future.
And lastly, the tool needs to translate the testing attributes in a way that even no-brainer would understand. Showing what are the test parameters and giving an âEstimated usable life expectancyâ based on the tests that itâs always checking and telling the user.
It doesnât have to be a new software, you could just improve DLG to add these features and of course, avoid the same software bloat problem that Smartware has. I understand that a software that runs in the background takes resources out, by my anti-virus NEVER peaks above 10% of CPU usage, so thereâs no excuse for bloating here⊠Specially since this software wonât be copying files.
A big lot of consumers take your slogan âPut your life on itâ quite literally, why not helping them keep their lives safe? What do you think?