IBM Hard Disk Drive Monitor

Hard Disk Drive Monitor ======================= Version 2.0 (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1996. All rights reserved. Description =========== The Hard Disk Drive Monitor uses Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) to monitor the status of physical drives in the computer. A hard disk drive must be SMART-compatible for the Hard Disk Drive Monitor to be able to detect potential failures in that drive. If the Hard Disk Drive Monitor indicates that a drive has a potential failure condition, you should back up that drive immediately, to avoid losing valuable software and data if the drive actually fails. However, the Hard Disk Drive Monitor is not to be used as a substitute for regular backups of the drive and might not detect all predicatable failure conditions. Hard disk drives can fail for reasons that are not predictable by the Hard Disk Drive Monitor. In some situations, the Hard Disk Drive Monitor will not detect a potential failure condition soon enough to allow you to back up the drive before it fails. The Hard Disk Drive Monitor works with SMART-compatible hard disk drives. The Hard Disk Drive Monitor screen displays a Drive icon for each hard disk drive being monitored. The colored indicator on each Drive icon indicates the status of that drive. A green indicator means that the drive is reporting a good status. A red indicator means that a potential failure (Alert) condition has been detected. A gray indicator means that the drive is not SMART-compatible or is not controlled by the correct device driver (see "System Requirements"). If an Alert condition is detected, the Alert panel is displayed, and an Alert beep sounds. You should immediately back up the drive to avoid losing data that is more recent than your most recent periodic backup. Important: ========= You should always perform regular backups of data to avoid data loss. The Hard Disk Drive Monitor detects only possible failure conditions that can be detected by monitoring certain hard-disk-drive components. Drives can fail for many reasons other than those that can be predicted by the Hard Disk Drive Monitor. Installation ============ The Installation program (HD_INST.CMD) can be run from any OS/2 command prompt and installs the Hard Disk Drive Monitor onto your hard disk. It creates a folder on your Desktop containing the Hard Disk Drive Monitor icon, an Uninstall icon, and a README icon. Opening the README icon displays this text file. Use the Uninstall icon to remove the Hard Disk Drive Monitor from your hard disk. Before installing the program, verify that the target drive has enough space to install the program (approximately 200 KB). Syntax: hd_install [[<target_path>] [<option>]] where <target_path> is the target drive (the default is 'c:') <option> is '/s' to create a shadow of the program in the startup folder, and '/r' to reinstall For example: hd_install c: /s Files: HDMON.EXE = the main program file. HDMON.TXT = the text file (also used to save configuration settings). HDMON.HLP = the help file containing online help information. ASPIPFA.SYS = the device driver used to distinguish between IDE drives and SCSI drives. README.TXT = this information file. All these files must be in the directory from which the Hard Disk Drive Monitor (HDMON.EXE) is started. Operation ========= The Hard Disk Drive Monitor monitors the status of SMART-compatible hard disk drives in your computer. The Monitor performs this operation at a regular, user-specified time interval. To set the interval, click on "Options" from the menu bar, and then click on "Configuration." In the Configuration panel, click on the up arrow or down arrow to select an interval between 1 and 60 minutes. The new interval will take effect when the next monitoring cycle begins. The Hard Disk Drive Monitor continues monitoring the hard disk drives as long as disk activity is detected during the monitoring time interval. If the computer goes into an Advanced Power Management (APM) reduced-power state during a monitoring interval in which disk activity has occurred, the Hard Disk Drive Monitor will "wake up" the computer to monitor the hard disk drives. If no further disk activity occurs, the computer will be allowed to return to the reduced-power state (after the period of time specified for Advanced Power Management), and the Hard Disk Drive Monitor will not wake up the computer again. Enabling the APM Scan option allows the Hard Disk Drive Monitor to wake up the computer every four hours to monitor the hard disk drives, regardless of whether disk activity has occurred. To enable the APM Scan option, click on "Options" from the menu bar, and then click on "Configuration." In the Configuration panel, click on radio button "Enabled" for Monitoring during APM standby. To control monitoring of SCSI Drives, click on radio button "Enabled" or "Disabled" for Monitoring of SCSI Drives in the Configuration panel. System Requirements =================== For proper operation of the Hard Disk Drive Monitor, the hard disk drives in the computer must be controlled through the Intel PIIX Bus Master IDE device driver, version 2.02 or later. The file for this driver is PIIXIDE.ADD. Troubleshooting =============== All the files listed in the "Installation" section must be in the directory from which the Hard Disk Drive Monitor is started. If the program is started by an icon, the working directory in the icon settings must point to the directory that contains these files. The Intel PIIX Bus Master IDE device driver must be installed. If this device driver is installed, the following line exists in your CONFIG.SYS file: BASEDEV = PIIXIDE.ADD {driver options} The device driver that is supplied with the Hard Disk Drive Monitor also must be installed. This device driver allows the Monitor to distinguish between SCSI drives and SMART-compatible IDE drives. The Hard Disk Drive Monitor will show a gray indicator on the Drive icon if this device driver is not installed. If this device driver is installed, the following line exists in your CONFIG.SYS file: DEVICE = [ drive ] [ path ] SCSIPFA.SYS The text file HDMON.TXT contains the configuration settings. If this file is replaced, the monitoring interval and APM Scan setting will return to their default settings (monitoring interval of 10 minutes, APM Scan disabled).