SSDWidget 2.0

Solid State Drives are proved to be much more reliable and performance-boosting than conventional hard disk drives, due to the use of NAND Flash memory and the removal of moving part. The capabilities of providing high data access speed and withstanding harsh environment have led to the increasing adoption of SSDs as boot drive and mission-critical data storage in embedded and industrial computing systems, where the devices are required for heavy-duty tasks under demanding environments. However, this situation can put SSDs at risk of drive failures, which can be catastrophic because SSD is the component that holds all the valuable data and files.

Drive failures normally result from predictable situation, such as gradual wear-down and large number of program/erase cycles. These common failures can be easily monitored by analyzing the threshold so that the predictions can be made accordingly. What users worry the most is the unpredictable type, which can occur suddenly, before there is any sign of warning. This can be caused by electronic component defects, sudden power loss or other unexpected external factors. Therefore, a monitoring tool is highly needed.

Apacer has innovated a comprehensive disk monitoring and maintaining utility called SSDWidget2.0 including features of S.M.A.R.T., disk erase and mobile monitoring. S.M.A.R.T. function is a major part of SSDWidget2.0 that provides SSD status for SSD lifetime monitoring and workload analysis. There are significant drive status attributes including initial bad block count, total later bad block count, maximum erase count, average erase count, power on hours and power cycle, which serve as helpful reference for device workload, lifetime, and failure prediction.

With the rise of smart mobile devices, users will find the need to monitor Apacer SSDs without being bounded by time and space constraints. Thus, there is also an App for SSDWidget2.0, enabling users to monitor drive status from a smart mobile device.