What is the Best Way to Maintain Your HD Apart from Microsoft's CheckD

[Cytomax]

Hello all,
I am currently starting to amass a bunch of important data on my hard drive and was thinking if there was a proactive way in which i can maintain the integrity of my data. I was searching around and found a program which claims to do such a thing and more such as retrieve data and fix (certain types) of broken hard drives

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I watched some of the videos and read some of the reviews and i must say i am very impressed with it

I was going to purchase it but i thought it best to ask if

1) Anyone has ever heard of the program

and/or

2) Does anyone have any recommendations on a similar program

Thanks in Advance
Eddie

 

[MonkeyX]

I have used it many, many times to recover data from otherwise dead drives with a great deal of success. The only thing it can't do is recover from data from a mechanical failure (ie. click of death or bios won't recognize, etc). Otherwise it has never let me down! As for it being a proactive measure I can't say as it really would do much more than CheckDisk does. It is much more in depth on it's checks but still I don't personally know that it would do any more to protect the data. The best (ok only) totally proactive solution I know of is good/frequent backups! But for recovery Spinrite is hands down the best I have ever used. A bit pricey but very well worth it. Trust me it even fixed a freak out girlfriend who lost several weeks worth of work and school papers due to a drive giving out! [umount /dev/rant ]

 

[wolluf]

One point about 'pro-active'. If you constantly run scans (of any type), you're more likely to shorten the life of the drive.

As MonkeyX says - backup. If you do encounter a problem, then use appropriate tools to recover - if possible.