SSD Utility Suite™
User Guide
Solid State Doctor™ is a software suite intended to enhance the user experience for
customers using SSD (Solid State Drive) products by providing them a set of
“tools” to monitor, maintain, and enhance the performance of their
SSD. The tools provided will
include drive information, S.M.A.R.T. status and monitoring, overprovisioning,
performance optimization (TRIM), firmware updater, disk cloning, and secure
data wiping.
·
Drive Information Tool – This
will show you the basic information of every drive in your system. The
information displayed will include the drive model number, serial number,
firmware version, port number, drive size, ATA version, supported features,
drive temperature, lifetime drive usage.
The Drive Information Tool is enabled for all drives in the system.
·
Overprovision Tool – The overprovision tool will allow the
user to allocate a portion of the free space on the SSD to be used by the
controller in the SSD within certain guidelines. This overprovisioned space created on
the drive will allow the controller to better manage and maintain the
performance and longevity of the SSD drive.
·
S.M.A.R.T. Status Tool – This will display the current S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis
and Reporting Technology) status of the drive overall as well as the status of
individual attributes of the drive.
The S.M.A.R.T. Status Tool is enabled for all drives in the system.
o
The
Quick and Full Diagnostic self-tests can be performed that are built into the
drive controller.
o
The S.M.A.R.T. Polling feature allows the user to
configure alerts via e-mail in the event one or more of the individual
S.M.A.R.T. attributes have been exceeded indicating a failure occurring with
the SSD drive.
·
Disk Clone Tool – This tool copies the contents of the
selected source drive to the selected destination drive. The Clone Tool will only be enabled if a
SSD is detected in the system and is selected as the source or destination
drive for the cloning. The cloning
function supports upsizing and downsizing of partitions to be cloned to the
destination drive allowing you to clone a larger capacity drive to a smaller
capacity drive and vice versa.
·
Optimize (TRIM) Tool – The Optimize Tool issues a TRIM command to the SSD which tells the SSD which data blocks are no
longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. Regular use of the TRIM command will
help the SSD maintain maximum performance.
TRIM can be run manually or auto-scheduled.
·
Secure Wipe Tool – The Secure Wipe Tool will allow the
user to securely delete the entire contents of the drive. This feature will place the drive in its
original unformatted RAW state without any file system. The data on your drive cannot be
recovered after running a secure wipe.
As a safety feature, the Secure Wipe Tool will NOT allow the user to
erase the contents of their boot drive.
·
The Solid
State Doctor™ runs on Windows® XP SP3, Windows®
Vista, Windows® 7,
Windows® 8, and Server 2008, including both 32 and 64 bit versions, and all
released Service Packs on all Microsoft® file systems. Supports SSD
drives running on Intel, AMD, and nVidia chipset based systems with TRIM
capable storage drivers on SATA host controllers operating in both IDE and AHCI
modes and SSDs connected though USB ports using SAT-capable cables and
enclosures.
·
Note1: Some nVidia storage drivers will not
properly pass ATA commands to the SSD drive affecting certain functions of the
Solid State Doctor™. Make
sure that your SSD drive is listed as an ATA/SATA device in “Device
Manager” – in some cases, your SATA drive may display as a SCSI
device in “Device Manager” due to incompatible storage
drivers. If you experience these
issues, it may be necessary to change your storage drivers to the Microsoft
defaults or contact the chipset manufacturer for updated drivers.
The software is installed on the system using standard
Windows® supported installation software. The software must be installed
and run from an account with full administrator account privileges. If your account does not have these
privileges, you should contact your system administrator to have these
privileges granted to your account.
You will need at least local administrator privileges on the computer.
This utility only runs on local SSD drives. On Windows® Vista and higher
systems, if your account does not have full administrator privileges, you may
receive an error that the program requires elevation. You can ignore this error
and run the software from the Start Menu by right-clicking the program icon and
choose “Run as Administrator”.
When you launch
Solid State Doctor™, you will be given a list of the
available drives. You first select the drive you wish to work on, and then
select the tool you would like to use, or the test you would like to perform.
Drive Information
The Drive Information Tool will provide you general
information on the selected drive.
This includes the items listed below:
·
Model Number
·
Serial Number
·
Firmware Version
·
Port Number
·
Drive Size
·
ATA Version
·
Supported Features
·
SSD Temperature
·
Lifetime Usage
The overprovision tool will allow the user to
shrink an existing volume and allocate a portion of the free space on the SSD
drive to be used by the SSD controller within certain guidelines. This overprovisioned space created on
the drive will allow the controller to better manage and maintain the
performance and longevity of the SSD drive.
S.M.A.R.T. Status
Current
Status
Configure
Alerts (Polling)
The S.M.A.R.T. Info tool will show you the current
S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive overall as well as the status of individual
attributes of the drive. The
S.M.A.R.T. Polling feature allows the user to configure alerts via e-mail in
the event one or more of the individual S.M.A.R.T. attributes have been
exceeded indicating a failure occurring with the SSD drive. Solid State Doctor will poll the
drive(s) every 60 minutes for any change to the attributes and will send an
alert if any attributes are out of normal range.
Quick Diagnostic Self-Test
Full
Diagnostic Self-Test
The Quick Diagnostics test will perform a basic
SMART test. The test will run the built in manufacturer’s “short
test”, and then report back the SMART status of the drive based on this
quick test. This test can provide reasonably high confidence that the drive is
in good working order. For more in depth testing of the drive, the Full
Diagnostics test should be performed.
The Full Diagnostics test will perform a detailed
SMART test. The test will run the built in manufacturer’s “full
test”, and then report back the SMART status of the drive based on this
full test. This test can provide very high confidence that the drive is in good
working order.
The Disk Clone Tool will copy the contents of the
selected source drive to the selected destination drive. The Clone Tool will only be enabled if a
SSD is detected in the system and is selected as the source or destination
drive for the cloning. The cloning
function supports upsizing and downsizing of partitions to be cloned to the
destination drive allowing you to clone a larger capacity drive to a smaller
capacity drive and vice versa.
Simply change the partition size to accommodate the available drive capacity.
1.
Select the source drive (i.e. existing system drive)
you want to clone.
2.
Next, select the destination drive that the source
drive will be copied to. The
destination drive should be “raw” (new/unused) with no file system
or partitions on the drive. Make any
adjustments to the partition size(s) to be cloned to the destination drive to
accommodate the available capacity and select “Start”.
3.
After cloning is finished, shutdown the system
first, then disconnect the old system drive (source), and move/connect
the new system drive (destination) to the same SATA port as the old one.
When booting from the new drive for the first
time, Windows may say that it did not shutdown properly – this is
normal so don’t be alarmed.
If you get that message, select “Start Windows Normally”.
Optimize (TRIM) Tool
Manual
Optimization
Scheduled
Optimization
The Optimize Drive tool allows you to tell the SSD which data
blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. Normally,
operations such as delete generally only means the data blocks involved are flagged
as not in use. By passing this information down to the SSD controller, these
blocks are cleared. This, in turn helps maintain the write speed of the SSD.
To auto-schedule TRIM, select the “Scheduled
TRIM” box and set the frequency and time to run the TRIM process. The system will optimize your SSD
drive(s) automatically based on the schedule set. Once the schedule has been set, the
Solid State Doctor™ does not have to be running for the automatic
operation to take place.
Secure Wipe Tool
Disabled
for system drives
Confirmation
dialog on non-system drives
The Secure Wipe tool will completely and permanently erase
the entire drive contents including partitions and file systems returning it to
a raw state. Any data that was
previously on the SSD drive will be non-recoverable at the end of this process.
NOTE: The wipe
function is disabled for system drives as a safety mechanism.
In addition, for non-system drives, you will receive a
warning dialog to make sure that you want to permanently erase the contents of
the selected drive. This warning
will be your last chance to cancel/exit out of the operation.
PLEASE
NOTE THAT THE DATA IS NON-RECOVERABLE AFTER THIS HAS BEEN RUN. PLEASE MAKE SURE
THAT YOU ARE CERTAIN OF THE DATA YOU ARE ERASING BEFORE RUNNING THIS TOOL.