Getting warned before a drive fails, with Pulse by Zaweba

Drives rarely fail without some warning. The trouble is that the warning sits inside the drive's own SMART data, where almost nobody looks. Pulse by Zaweba reads that data and, with the drive health alert, tells you when it starts to look worse. The alert is on by default.

What it watches for

The alert fires when a drive's SMART health declines. Pulse looks at several signs. A critical warning raised by the drive itself. New media errors. New reallocated sectors, which is how a drive moves data away from spots it no longer trusts. Spare capacity falling below its threshold. And 90 per cent of the drive's rated life used.

Each of those is a different kind of news. A critical warning is the drive telling you plainly that something is wrong. Media errors and reallocated sectors suggest the storage itself is wearing or damaged. Low spare and high life used are about age: an SSD has a rated amount of writing in it, and when most of that is used, it's time to plan a replacement.

Which drives it covers

NVMe drives are read without administrator rights, so their health is watched from the start. SATA and USB drives are read through the optional sensor helper, which you turn on with Sensor readings in Settings or the button on the Temperatures page. If your PC has an older SATA drive, switch the helper on so the alert can see it too.

You can look at the details yourself any time in the Drive health group on the Temperatures page. For NVMe drives it shows the critical warning flags, available spare and its threshold, percentage of rated life used, media errors, power-on hours and temperature.

When it fires

Like every Pulse alert, it fires once and then re-arms when things return to normal. It appears as a Windows notification from the tray icon, and it's added to the Alert log on the Alerts page with the date and time. Drive alerts are highlighted as warnings so they're easy to pick out later.

What to do when you get one

First, back up. Whatever the alert says, a copy of your files on another drive is the right first step, and it costs nothing if the drive turns out to be fine.

Then look at the Drive health group to see which sign triggered it. Rated life used reaching 90 per cent is a gentle nudge to plan ahead. A critical warning or a run of new media errors is more urgent, and replacing the drive soon is wise.

If the drive is also very busy, the Disk read and Disk write columns on the Live page show which apps are using it, and the History page records each app's disk bytes minute by minute.

Why it's worth keeping on

Most drive alerts never fire, and that's the point. The alert sits in the background, costs nothing, and the one time it matters it gives you days or weeks to act rather than a drive that simply stops. With Pulse by Zaweba in the tray, you don't need to remember to check.