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

[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

 

[Automata]

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

1) no
2) no

$90 is pretty hefty for that kind of program, I don't see a use for it. Use that $90 to buy a HDD from NewEgg, a 320gig. Add it to your computer. Now run an automated backup either daily or weekly. Problem solved. As long as you do backups and keep good care of your HDD (ie: keep them cool!), you shouldn't have a problem...



EDIT: And with a 320, you can do more than 1 backup, like what I do. I keep a certain number of backups before I delete them from the backup drive (ie: as many as I can fit on the drive). So I have like 6 copies of a folder, since it backs it up once a week. I haven't capped out the HDD yet... here is exactly what I do:

I have a dedicated backup drive.

Every Monday at 5am, it runs a full backup of the boot drive.

Along with that, it also backs up the "My Docs" to the same drive.

If my main drive fails, I get a replacement and do a restore.

If my Windows install fails, I do a restore.

If I delete a file by accident, I just open the backup and pull out the file I need.

 

[Deanzo]

1: Yes, been reading GRC website and using shieldsup and leaktest for years.
2: No

I 2nd just getting a backup HDD.

 

[Cytomax]

First, i would like to thank all of you for replying to my question.

Second, I agree that all of you are correct

What i didnt mention is that i do backup the things of utmost importance like documents, music, picutures, etc...

BUT

The thing is that i have over 40 full length 8 GIG DVD movies that i bought and i like to copy them to my Home Theater PC along with all the video that is recorded onto it from the TV. It would be way to costly (Double) to be keeping backups of all of this on another HD so i would just like to know if there was a program that could kinda like tell me if something is going wrong and maybe fix it...
and yes i am aware of S.M.A.R.T but i am just looking around for other possible alternatives.

Thanks in Advance
Eddie