Acronis Launches Free Disk Monitoring Tool

Acronis, Inc. announced a new free disk monitoring tool for businesses and consumers alike, Acronis Drive Monitor.

Acronis Drive Monitor is a free, downloadable software application that monitors the health of server, PC and laptop hard disk drives. It helps to alert users to problems that may indicate an imminent failure and in doing so gives users time to react by saving the data contained on their hard drive and allowing them to arrange for replacements.

“Data is important whether it’s at your home or office,” said Jason Donahue, CEO of Acronis. “Unfortunately hard drives fail every day which is why Acronis has developed Acronis Drive Monitor as a free tool for the community at large. It can help predict when a hard drive is about to fail, giving you the chance to back up your data before disaster strikes. No one should be without it which is why we are offering it as a free tool.”

When Acronis Drive Monitor identifies a problem, it generates an email or onscreen alert describing the specific finding. It offers a simple and easy to understand explanation of the alert guiding the user to the steps they need to take to remedy the issue. A color coded summary provides an overview of the disk’s health at a glance and weekly reports summarize the findings.

“It works! It told me my 320GB hard drive was about to fail. I started backups immediately,” said Allan E. Levy, a beta tester from North Potomac, Maryland. “The next day, my drive began to fail and the partition with the OS was destroyed. But thanks to Acronis Drive Monitor, I had a fresh backup before my hard drive crashed.“

Acronis Drive Monitor observes operating system health, checks the last backup date, and evaluates disk performance data generated by most disk drives via a disk-resident monitoring function called S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). Acronis also supports other storage devices such as non-S.M.A.R.T. compatible RAID systems via scripts. Further, Acronis Drive Monitor also monitors messages in the Windows event log that indicate that data may be in danger.

Acronis Drive Monitor is integrated with the current versions of Acronis home and business backup and recovery products. Users of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 business software, Acronis True Image Home 2010 and Acronis Backup and Security 2010 home PC software can take advantage of Acronis Drive Monitor’s ability to trigger an immediate, automated backup of any disk that shows signs of imminent failure. It also notifies users if a backup has not been performed.

Acronis Drive Monitor works on most Windows PCs, workstations or servers to check for disk-related OS events, file system errors, and negative changes in S.M.A.R.T.-monitored disk functions like throughput, spin-up time and seek error rates.

“We built this free tool with the help of the IT community and we’ll support it exclusively through our online Support Forums and Knowledge Base. Plus, we will use feedback from users to develop new features and capabilities as this tool becomes an integral part of their system maintenance,” said Donahue.

Acronis Disk Monitor is a free tool available to everyone.