Two tools for checking hard-drive health

PC generates hundreds of Registry errors, daily

A reader asks what to do about an alarming number of Registry faults, reported by routine PC-cleanup scans.

Plus: Understanding Windows’ system power states, and what the heck could have encrypted a reader’s User files without his knowledge? (It wasn’t malware!)

A problem with overzealous cleaning?

Reader Garry Oman worries about Registry issues.

• “I am baffled by the number of Registry errors that appear on my machine. I run CCleaner and Advanced System Care; but the next day, hundreds more errors appear. Where do they come from, and are they harmful?”

Things might not be as bad as you think, Garry. You simply can’t believe every “Registry error count” you see.

Some cleanup apps (seemingly deliberately) inflate their error counts by including trivial issues that really don’t require any remedial action. Or they might count some completely normal conditions as “errors.”

Inflating error counts is often a marketing ploy. When the cleaning tool supposedly fixes a long list of “errors,” you’re likely to think: “What great software! Look at the huge number of problems it corrected!”

And if that sort of spin or mild deception wasn’t bad enough, some cleanup/tuneup apps compound the injury by running up their numbers with aggressive and often unnecessary cleaning — such as needlessly stripping out and replacing system drivers. These “repairs” can actually destabilize your PC and make it perform worse than before. For some specific examples, see the Aug. 9, 2012, Top Story, “Test-driving ‘free scan’ tune-up suites.”

For me, it’s a red flag when any cleanup/tuneup app reports vast numbers of problems on a PC that’s running OK.

That said, there are some real Registry errors that are worth removing. They typically result from sloppy programming — for example, an app’s uninstall process failed to remove all the data that the app put into the Registry during setup and use.

Sad to say, Microsoft can sometimes be a major offender here. For instance, Windows Update is notorious for leaving unneeded data in the Registry after various system apps or components are removed or changed. (Silverlight, anyone?)

Some apps deliberately leave data behind. For example, if you install a limited time, trial version of software and then uninstall it when the trial expires, the app might leave behind some form of Registry-based marker designed to prevent installing another free trial. Whether this orphaned data — entries that are associated with an app that’s no longer on the system — is or isn’t an actual error comes down to your point of view. (I test a lot of software, so I don’t want any unneeded data left behind on my systems.)

Are these errors dangerous? On their own, most Registry errors have negligible impact. A single Registry key that’s unneeded, obsolete, or incorrect takes up only a tiny amount of space on the hard drive and in RAM; it also has an imperceptible impact on Registry load times and responsiveness.

Over time, however, a PC can aggregate hundreds or even thousands of erroneous Registry entries. That’s when the effects can become noticeable.

And then there are rare and serious Registry errors that might immediately impact a system. They can cause freezes, crashes, misloads, and messed up file associations (e.g., the wrong app opens a specific file type). They might also result in connectivity problems such as being unable to see or access other PCs on your local net. And that’s just a partial list.

Serious errors can result from failed or buggy updates, malware, software malfunctions, and a host of other causes. Correcting the root problem — through system maintenance, malware scanning, and so forth — can prevent new Registry errors for occurring. But you still need to clean the Registry of leftover errors and bogus data.

That’s why I still recommend running a reputable Registry cleaner such as CCleaner (site) from time to time. It’ll likely find some modest number of problems every time you run it. But those errors are usually small and easily fixed.

For a fuller discussion of cleanup/maintenance, see Jan. 16, 2014, Top Story, “Keep a healthy PC: A routine-maintenance guide.”

If you use reputable cleanup tools, and keep up with your routine maintenance, Registry errors should be relatively few — and not have any meaningful impact on Windows’ performance.

Is data safe in sleep/standby/suspend mode?

A reader asks:

• “What happens to running programs when Windows goes into standby mode? Is the data kept safe?”

In general, Standby usually refers to a low-power state that suspends system operation without shutting anything down. It then trickles just enough power to the system to keep all volatile system memory (RAM) intact. When the PC resumes, full power is returned and things pick up from where they left off, without missing a beat.

Standby’s benefit is reduced power consumption with a fast resume. On the other hand, it leaves everything in live memory; if you turn off the power (or pull the plug or lose electrical service, etc.), any unsaved data will be lost.

But note that terms such as “sleep,” “standby,” “suspend,” and so forth can be fuzzy — they can mean different things on different systems.

Microsoft offers some specific PC power-state definitions on an MSDN page. Those definitions are usually accurate for Windows, and for hardware OEMs and software publishers who follow Microsoft’s lead.

Of special note is the improved form of standby supported by Windows 7, 8, and 10 on compatible hardware. It’s called hybrid sleep.

When your PC enters hybrid sleep, Windows first writes a full hibernation file, just as if the system was turning off. But instead of turning off right away, the PC initially goes into a conventional standby/suspend/sleep mode.

Thus Hybrid sleep keeps two identical copies of all live data: one copy is safely stored in the hibernation file and the other copy is kept alive in RAM with a trickle of power.

A PC in hybrid-sleep will usually stay in this dual state for about three hours (adjustable via Control Panel’s Power Options applet). If you press a key, click the mouse, or otherwise wake a PC while it’s in this initial phase, the system will usually resume almost instantly, using the data still stored in RAM.

If there’s no activity within about three hours (or whatever time you set), the PC will shut down fully to save power. But no data is lost because everything was preserved in the hibernation file.

When you return to the PC, it resumes by activating the drive and writing the large hibernation file back into memory. This usually takes a few seconds or minutes, depending on the amount of memory in use and the speed of the drive. But the end result is that you can resume exactly from where you left off, with all files, data, and screens just as you left them.

Note: In addition to automatic power savings, hybrid sleep also provides an automatic safety net against accidental power loss during sleep. If electrical trouble of any kind erases the in-RAM data, the copy on the hard drive should remain unaffected.

In short: a “Hybrid sleep” option offers power savings, fast resume, and improved data security. It’s truly a superior form of standby; it’s worth using if your PC supports it!

What the heck encrypted my files?

Another PC user has lost access to personal data in a most puzzling way.

• “Many files on my Win10 laptop have become EFS encrypted, and I can’t open them. Please tell me how to get my files back!”

Oh, dear! I can think of no mechanism that would spontaneously encrypt files on a hard drive.

I don’t think encrypting ransomware (Wikipedia info and MS info) is to blame in this case.

Ransomware wants you to know your data has been encrypted — and (indirectly) by whom, so you can pay them the “ransom.” This malware almost always pops up a dialog box that tells you how to pay (usually in the form of untraceable Bitcoin) for the decryption key. But, apparently, you’ve received no such notice, so I doubt it’s ransomware.

I also doubt it’s generic malware. Why would someone go to the trouble of crafting remote-encryption malware, then release it into the wild — just for grins or some form of malicious pranking? That doesn’t make sense to me.

So, if it’s not any form of malware, and you didn’t encrypt your own files, it’s almost surely the actions — deliberate or otherwise — of someone who has either local or remote access to your PC. You might want to have a talk with everyone who has access to the system. Perhaps they can offer a clue.

But until and unless you get the password from someone or somewhere, your files are toast; there’s no practical way to break EFS encryption.

So, your best and perhaps only bet is to restore your files from backups.

You do have backups, don’t you?

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Two tools for checking hard-drive health

One of the original Windows Secrets subscribers wrote in to recommend the drive-analysis tool, Hard Disk Sentinel. He stated that the app warned him of a failing drive before the drive became unusable.

Drive failures are arguably the most destructive form of data loss — especially as drives grow into the terabyte ranges. All too often, however, when a drive starts to crap out, it does so without an obvious warning to the user. And as we at Windows Secrets know, (based on the help requests we receive) many users don’t have backups.

Always interested in a new utility, I started my research into HD Sentinel by looking for online reviews. But I didn’t find much. In a Malware Tips forum post, a member asked whether the utility was safe to use. The few replies generally stated that HD Sentinel was safe but perhaps too prone to false failure predictions.

Moreover, several posts in the thread recommended Ashampoo’s HDD Control, so I took a look at both products. Note that I can’t compare the ability of either product to predict a coming drive failure. Both tools reported that the drives on my test system were in good health.

Ashampoo HDD Control: A suite of simple tools

I downloaded and installed the Windows-only, free version of Ashampoo’s HDD Control 2017 (site) — and immediately ran into one of those annoying marketing/seemingly bait-and-switch setups.

The installation required signing up for an Ashampoo user account (giving, at a minimum, an email address) and clicking an email-based confirmation link. You’re then given a product key. During the install process, you’re also nagged to upgrade to the “premium” version of the app. That screen doesn’t tell you the cost of the premium version or what you get above and beyond the free version. (I continued with free.)

With the installation process complete, the shortcut icon for HDD Control appeared on my desktop — but also another shortcut labeled “My Software Deals.” Clicking it sends you off to the Ashampoo site where you’re offered deep discounts on other Ashampoo products (of which there are many). For example, the paid HDD Control 3 was discounted from U.S. $40 down to $20. It’s fairly hardcore marketing that’s somewhat intrusive. (Fortunately, the My Software Deals shortcut is easy to kill off.)

A bit more shocking, the initial run of HDD Control failed to locate any of the three hard drives on my test Windows 10 system. They finally showed up after I rebooted the system and relaunched HDD Control.

This utility is actually a suite of tools, but the default window gives a report on the temperature and S.M.A.R.T data for each of the drives it finds. For example, it reported (Figure 1) that all three of my internal drives were within normal temperature ranges and healthy. On the other hand, it found but could not report on an attached USB thumbdrive. (It also does not support RAID drives.)

If you want a deeper check of your drives, the Run Tests drop-down menu offers three S.M.A.R.T. tests and a “disk surface” check.

Other tools: HDD Control 2017 provides a selection of drive-management options, including defragging, drive cleaning, disk-space use, and a duplicate-file finder.

These tools are adequate but not best in class. For example, the disk-space analyzer makes it relatively easy to dig into what files and folders are space hogs, but JAM’s TreeSize (site) and MindGems’ Folder Size (site) are better apps (and both have free and paid versions).

The same is true for HDD Control’s Duplicate Finder tool. It has a number of options for fine-tuning the search, but it doesn’t give much information about found duplicates except their location and size.

Drive cleaning tools are always worrisome, most often for being too thorough and removing something critical. I ran our usual recommendation — CCleaner — on my test system and it found 2721MB of obsolete or duplicate files to remove. HDD Control found 3477MB, making it somewhat more aggressive. (Because of the potential hazards of over-cleaning, always make a full backup before launching a cleaning tool.) That possibly too-aggressive feeling was reinforced when I had CCleaner remove the files it found, rebooted the PC, and then rechecked with HDD Control. It still found 2790MBs of “unneeded” files.

Note that CCleaner also offers adequate drive-use and duplicates-finder tools, but it doesn’t give drive-health information. And, again, you can find better standalone drive-use and duplicates tools.

Ashampoo doesn’t make it easy to compare the free HDD Control 2017 with the paid HDD Control 3. The latter’s diagnostics tools and options might be more comprehensive. The only difference I could see in the marketing material was the paid edition’s automatic email notifications for hard-drive problems. That’s important for IT managers, but not so much for end users.

Bottom line: HDD Control is fine if you want a simple suite of drive-management tools, though it would be better if it included a good partition manager such as EaseUS Partition Master (site).

Hard Disk Sentinel: Forecasting drive failures

HD Sentinel is primarily a paid product, though the publisher offers a 30-day trial version with only basic functions. The app’s main window suggests that it’s designed mostly for PC professionals, with a good selection of configuration options, extensive drive information, and several analysis reports.

And unlike the Windows-only HDD Control, HD Sentinel supports RAID drives and comes in a Linux version, though it’s less capable than its Windows sibling.

HD Sentinel, like most other drive checkers, uses S.M.A.R.T (more info) data for its reports (Figure 2). But the tool claims to provide a better prediction of future drive life than other products; the publisher states that its ongoing analysis of S.M.A.R.T. data is more effective than simply looking at set thresholds.

The “lifetime” information for each drive includes “Power on time,” “Estimated remaining lifetime,” and “Total start/stop count” that’s reportedly based on ongoing S.M.A.R.T. information analysis.

But my test system, that data seemed somewhat confusing. For example, the oldest drive had a power-on count of over 959 days and a remaining life of 865 days. On the other hand, a nearly new drive, with just 26 days of power-on time, had a predicted life of 1000 days. Either the old drive was an especially good device, or these “lifetime” numbers are relatively meaningless.

Even more puzzling, the Log tab for the older drive noted that “disk status is degraded in the past days.” I assume that letting the utility run for days and weeks will provide more information on possible drive issues.

HD Sentinel is a relatively flexible app; by default, it runs in the background and shows drive-health status in the Windows notification area. (On my system, it put up three small boxes in the “Show hidden icons” box.) Drive temperatures are graphed over time, and the preferences let me quickly switch from Celsius to Fahrenheit. That might sound obvious, but I could not figure out that switch in HDD Control.

Overall, HD Sentinel seems like a comprehensive drive-analysis tool. But I can’t vouch for its ability to predict future disasters.

OEM tools: Leading drive manufacturers offer drive-checking apps for download. Seagate, for example, has its SeaTools (site). But that utility has few functions and never seemed to work well on my systems. Often, a third-party utility is more flexible, especially if you have a mix of drive brands on your systems. And for the most part, all current drive-analysis software gets drive information from the same source: logged S.M.A.R.T. data.

Note: Better drive-analysis tools typically support solid-state drives, but SSD’s have very different issues than those with spinning platters. Be sure that any drive utility you run fully supports SSDs.

Given the potential loss of vast amounts of personal data, checking your system’s drive health should be part of your regular PC-maintenance routine (along with regular backups) If you want a comprehensive set of drive-analysis tools and options, you’ll have to pay for them. But it’s easy to try different apps to find the one you like best.

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