WD Data Lifeguard is no more & Refurb Job

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  • May 6, 2022 at 4:10 pm #69499
    Dave RiceDave Rice
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      @ricedg
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      The good thing about WD Data Lifeguard is that it will test any hard drive regardless of make, unfortunately its replacement, WD Digital Dashboard doesn’t. Dashboard is a great app with far more than Lifeguard, however it is strictly WD only. So, get it while you can here

      My latest job involves securely disposing of about 20 PCs and 2 servers, hence my renewed interest in hard drive tools. Whilst the PCs are at least 5 years old, about two have 500GB Barracudas and there are 10 WD Blue or Seagate 1TB. If they pass diagnostics they have a value.

      Looking at what tools to use I rediscovered Hirens BootCD, now a Windows PE USB stick. What can I say? It’s better than ever and something we should all have in the toolbox, get it here

      There are 5 x HP ProDesk 400 G1 – SFF – Pentium G3220 3 GHz which I am bumping up to 8GB, installing a 128GB SSD for W10 and including a 500GB or 1TB spinner. They can take an i3 or i5, £20 and £35 respectively on EBay. If anyone’s interested let me know. I’m not after huge amounts of money, £50 + P&P, it’s more about keeping them out of landfill.

      May 6, 2022 at 7:44 pm #69500
      Ed PEd P
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        @edps
        Forumite Points: 39

        Does Hirens handle SSDs? I seem to recall that I read somewhere that it might be an ‘in extremis’ tool for SSDs..

        May 7, 2022 at 8:15 pm #69503
        Dave RiceDave Rice
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          @ricedg
          Forumite Points: 7

          It depends by what you mean by handle SSDs? It’s based on Windows PE and boots OK on my new Thinkbook; Speccy and HWInfo detect everything. Here is a list of what’s included link The Windows password reset tool works OK as do the drive utilities I’ve used, more than that I’ve not tried yet.

          Interesting results from the hard drives. Anything <500GB just got wiped and will be destroyed. There are 2 x 500GB Barracudas, 4 x Seagate 1TB, 6 x 1TB WD Blue and 6 x 1TB WD Green. Most are ~7 years old. Apart from 2 x 1TB Seagates, all pass WD Lifeguard or EaseUs surface test diagnostics (run after wiping).

           

          May 7, 2022 at 9:31 pm #69505
          DrezhaDrezha
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            @drezha
            Forumite Points: 0

            There are 5 x HP ProDesk 400 G1 – SFF – Pentium G3220 3 GHz which I am bumping up to 8GB, installing a 128GB SSD for W10 and including a 500GB or 1TB spinner. They can take an i3 or i5, £20 and £35 respectively on EBay. If anyone’s interested let me know. I’m not after huge amounts of money, £50 + P&P, it’s more about keeping them out of landfill.

             

            I’d have bitten your hand off last weekend, but I ended up buying one on eBay and then sending it straight back unopened durting the week after the seller ended up buying me a power supply from another eBayer to ship to me and therefore hadn’t had the original power supply (or any power supply as stated in his description) and then purchased me a power supply that only had half the leads required. When it arrived back with them yesterday, they had the gall to say I hadn’t sent the hard drive back (we’d agreed not to send one as part of me making an offer for the PC). Frankly, it was the worst exprience I’ve had on eBay to date as a buyer.

            In the end, I bought a cheap Chinese PC on Amazon which was delivered in time for the bank holiday weekend and I was able to setup and play with Home Assistant over the extra day off.

            "Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

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