Volitans software on Monday released SMART Utility 1.2, a significant update to the hard drive diagnostic scanning application. The new features include more readable attribute names, displaying the model family, sending additional information to the smartctl engine, and French localization. The SMART Utility scans the internal hardware diagnostics system of hard drives SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), a system built into hard drives by their manufacturers to report on various measurements. The information detail can be used to detect when a hard drive is having mechanical or electrical problems, and can indicate when the hard drive is failing. The software can read and display these attributes in an effort to avoid device failure.

The update also brings an updated smartctl engine to 5.38, which provides more fixes and recognizes more drives as well as optional support for Unsanity's Smart Crash Reports. It also patches some memory leaks and contains other bug fixes.

SMART Utility is different from other drive utilities, such as Disk Utility, which only read the overall SMART Status, the company claims. SMART Utility not only displays the individual attributes to see their status and information, but it also uses an internal algorithm based on those attributes to detect drives failing before SMART indicates it has failed. The pre-fail detection, Volitans says, can save precious data before SMART has determined that the drive has failed. The software takes the raw information, which can be viewed on the command line with smartmontools, and presents it in an easy to read format, as well as running its internal pre-fail algorithm.

SMART Utility is available in two licenses: a 10-copy license for $20, or a 100 copy license for $100. It can be purchased online through the software itself.