Supporting Seagate external drives - FreeAgent and FreeAgent Pro!
The portable storage device Seagate FreeAgent allows you to automatically copy and move digital content to various devices and services. Currently, the Seagate FreeAgent drive is one of the most popular and well-known drives among similar models due to its performance, availability and large volumes of information. New HDDlife® 3.1 controls the health and performance of external Seagate FreeAgent drives (USB/Firewire/eSata). Only HDDlife® 3.1 can monitor the state of FreeAgent on such server operating systems as Windows 2000 Server & 2003 Server, which is impossible with the Seagate software coming together with FreeAgent.
The Registration Wizard has been improved
Now new HDDlife® 3.1 uses technologies improving the Registration Wizard of the program. These features allow users choose the best registration method themselves, which is especially important if no Internet connection is available. The enhancements considerably speed up the registration process making it fast and simple.
Changes in the program
The company's specialists constantly improve HDDlife® trying to make it as comfortable and effective as possible. Version 3.1 includes modifications concerning the stability of the program, some bugs have been fixed. You can see the entire list of changes on our site.
What’s new in HDDlife® 3.0?
Detailed SMART report.
With the suggestions of professional users taken into account, HDDlife® 3.0 now has a new feature – detailed SMART information, which allows you to view detailed information about attributes. SMART monitors the main characteristics of the drive showing them in the form of numbers. Version 3.0 uses mathematical algorithms to interpret SMART characteristics, which gives a more precise analysis of the health and performance state of a hard drive.
Support of USB hard drives.
Currently, USB hard drives are getting more and more popular. Speed, availability, ease of use, large amounts of information – all that takes you to a new level of mobile freedom and functionality. One of the new features in HDDlife® version 3.0 allows you to control the performance of external drives, now the program supports USB. Now the program can work with drives from the largest Japanese IO-Data company and with Western Digital Passport drives. Starting from version 3.0, the list of supported USB drives will be enlarged. You can see the list of supported and unsupported drives on our site at:
Indicating reading from/writing to the disk.
For maximum convenience, HDDlife® 3.0 allows you to display the read/write indicator next to the system clock (in the system tray). Now you can always see the hard drive activity indicators.
Power management.
Hard drive overheating due to the increase in the power it consumes is a serious problem, especially for those who use portable computers – laptops. The new feature in HDDlife® 3.0 – power management – allows you not only to control the amount of consumed power, but also to manage the hard drive power consumption.
Works with Windows Vista
HDDlife® 3.0 is fully compatible with the new operating system Microsoft Windows Vista. The program has a “Works on Windows Vista” certificate – it is included in a list of such programs on the Microsoft web site.
Easy registration.
One more feature in the new version of HDDlife® 3.0 allows you to avoid mistakes typical of manual registration – the program registration process is now improved, which makes it fast and easy even for inexperienced users
What's new in HDDlife® 2.9?
On-line hard drive stats collection
If enabled, HDDlife® sends small information packet about hard drive attributes changes. By default this mode is enabled, if you want to disable it – use menu File-Options-HDD Statistics.
NO ANY PERSONAL DATA TRANSLATED!
Bugs fixed:
+ On-line statistical database for hard drive attribute changes.
+ New languages added.
* Win2k – Icons on tab draw incorrectly. Fixed.
* Win2k – Options - Warnings – Bindings – circles without alpha channel. Fixed
* Win2k – on tab hard drive and shield shows with white background. Fixed.
* Win2k – Options – Tray Icon – screenshots with error. Fixed.
* If hard drive S.M.A.R.T. data can’t be accessed, in system tray shows temperature 255°C. Fixed.
What's new in HDDlife® 2.8?
Resizing the main window
Now the main window of HDDlife® is not strictly fixed: you can change its height and thus see information about free space on all disks at once.
Canceling turning the computer off
When configured to turn off the computer, for example, in case its hard drive was overheated, the program used to turn the computer off forcedly. Now the program displays an additional dialog box where you can see why the computer is being turned off and where you have 15 seconds to cancel it. Otherwise the computer is turned off after this delay is over.
Sending a test message by email
A lot of users asked us to add the feature of sending a test message by e-mail – it was really unpleasant to find out at the moment when a problem occurred that some parameter had been specified incorrectly during the configuration and e-mail notifications were not sent. We have added a button for sending a test message right from the settings dialog box.
Trial version limitations
Limitations in the trial (unregistered) version of HDDlife® have been changed – now changes in the settings are not saved, i.e. the program settings will be set to their defaults after you restart the program.
Bug fixes
Some minor bugs have been fixed.
What's new in HDDlife® 2.7? (codename Khazad-dum)
HDDlife® supports skins for AnywhereView™ technology!
AnywhereView™ technology is one of unique features of HDDlife® what allows to show hard drive health status and free space in any Windows program. In this version we enhance this technology to give users ability to change it using skins!
Now HDDlife® can use skins in AnywhereView™ technology – user can select visual skin what better for them, download new skins from our website.
More over, users can create their own skins! Detailed instructions – on our website: http://www.hddlife.com/eng/how-to-create-skin.html
Use lower memory
HDDlife® code was redesigned and highly optimized, with main purpose of memory use optimization. Result are more than we expected – if previous versions use more than 10Mb of RAM, but HDDlife® 2.7 – lower than 2Mb!
Bugs fixed
In the version 2.7 we fixed some bugs, one of them is very important. Many users reports what after each hard drive health check all icons on desktop are repainted. If check period is small this caused “blinking”.
Now this bug fixed and icons repainted only if hard drive health or free space changed – i.e. in rare cases!
What's new in HDDlife® 2.6? (codename Khazad-dum) - released December, 12 - 2005.
Information about time of the hard disk’s work
When you buy a hard disk, especially from an individual, you want to be sure that everything is OK, that the seller isn't concealing anything and you simply want to know how old this hard disk is. Now, with HDDlife® 2.6, you can answer all these questions! The new version displays exactly how many hours your hard disk has been working.
Adjusting the AAM level – Performance/Noise
For several years, all modern hard disks have supported the AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) technology that allows adjusting the level of noise produced by your hard disk during its operation. Of course, its performance changes too, but practice has shown that the changes aren't dramatic. HDDlife® 2.6 includes a feature of adjusting the noise/performance level! Now you can adjust it as desired. Our experience shows that for some hard disk models (such as Maxtor) you can achieve considerable noise reduction, making it almost totally silent!
Improvements in the interface
The new version has many minor changes and improvements in the interface. For example, now the icons of health or temperature in the system area (the tray, the area next to the clock) are shown in the same order as tabs in the main window. This will help you to understand to which disk the data refers. In previous versions you had to point at the icon and see the name of the disk in the tool tip.
HDDlife® 2.5 (codename Moria Gate) - released July,5 - 2005.
1. Disk free space info (with AnywhereView™ support)
Photos, presentations, home video - these and more occupy a lot of space on the disks of your computer. Only yesterday everything worked normally and now the computer slows down, documents cannot be saved, constant error messages about "not enough space..." appear on the screen. To prevent such situations, we added the feature of controlling free disk space to the new version of HDDlife. Complete information about all partitions of your hard drives - the name, file system, total size, free (available) space are now shown.
Of course, the AnywhereView™ technology supports displaying information about free space in any application - from the "My Computer" window to the "Open File" dialog box in Microsoft Word, etc.
2. Hibernate/standby/power off support in case of hard drive overheat.
If your hard drive reaches the critical temperature, it is not always possible to quickly decide what to do - you may simply be away from the computer. In this case HDDlife® can take care of your hard drive. Version 2.5 has the notion of critical temperature - you can set the computer to be turned off in case this temperature is exceeded. At the same time, though, HDDlife® supports a "Hibernation" mode - when the state of the desktop on your computer is saved and you will not lose any data, even unsaved documents in a text editor!
3. Many user interface enhancements (different icon colors for normal/urgent/bad-overheat temperatures)
BinarySense constantly improves the interface of HDDlife® making it yet more convenient for its users. In previous versions, the color of digits displaying the temperature of your drive in the system tray was the same for all its states. Now you can set different colors for different states of your drive, for instance, the normal temperature - green, dangerous - yellow, overheating - red. Now the user can determine what temperature should be considered dangerous and overheating. It is especially useful for those who use laptops where hard drives usually have a higher running temperature.
New notification types are added - now HDDlife® can warn you also with a sound message.
4. New control for visual bind warnings types.
The settings of modern programs are so numerous that sometimes it is just impossible to remember all the available options, especially if they are located on different tabs in the interface. The BinarySense company presents a new control element for the configuration of notifications in HDDlife® 2.5. All configuration options - from a sound message to turning off the computer - are presented in one convenient table. Just enable the notification type you need by clicking the corresponding cell in the table!
