Okay, I just installed it right now !
Indeed the SMART data are too much complicated for me :P Thanks for the main values to check. I just launched the software : it seems that it can't give the SMART attributes of my dying drive (according to ariaspi it's certainly because it's into an external case).
Oh by the way : have you any thought about the drive I'm planing to buy ? A Toshiba P300, 2To, 7200RPM, with a very affordable price.
Edit : just saw your message about it : I'm going to buy it right now :)

Okay :) So I absolutely have to put it again inside a comp' to be able to have them and check the drive ?

Okay :) Concerning defraggler, I switched language to english : it's the button "benchmark the drive" who made me thinks it was testing it (because of the french traduction). What it is usefull for ? Simply knowing how fast it is ?

Okay, you're confirming my plan ! :)

Thanks for the tip ;)

According to this article and Wikipedia, WD bought Hitachi HDD business and Toshiba bought Fujitsu HDD business.

In my opinion popular doesn't mean better, quite the opposite sometimes. Seagate are quite popular but I wouldn't buy one.

Edit:
Maybe, but I see no real reasons to check the bad drive any longer.

Yup! You only need to benchmark it one time to know how fast it is.
It's usually better to use the programs in english, if you are fluent with it, and I see you are. I never use software translated to my language. Those translations are so stupid that make your head spin...lol :))

Don't say that, I just noticed that my external drive I bought for backup who is labelled Maxtor on it seems to be a Seagate one inside :P (but according to your link it's normal since Seagate owns Maxtor)(and Samsung !)
I was still having a very tiny hope it could finally not be dying, but I guess you're right ^^" I'll leave it quiet unless I need to access some data again :)
Okay :) But the Health status that is showed on defraggler... is only here to show "globally" things I assume ? It's not very precise ?
Ahah XD I do agree. Well I usually tend to use english in softwares for this exact reason, but sometimes I let them in french when they doesn't seems too badly translated... which leads to this kind of situation : "benchmark the drive" has been translated in french in "check the drive" : nothing explicitly related to benchmark, and it's under the health status, sooo...
Thanks for the kind compliment :) I'm doing my best to improve and avoid as much as possible "horrors" & poor phrasing (advices & corrections are always welcome :D). I would love to be able to do more complex writings/formulations for complex thoughts in English but.. it's very hard :P And comprehension isn't always easy too ;)

I bought [url=https://www.rueducommerce.fr/produit/toshiba-p300-high-performance-hard-drive-2tb-bulk-27378234#moid:MO-78DA6M66697524]the Toshiba hdd[/url] ! It should arrive tuesday :)
Time to wait for it. I'll try to download the windows installation image in the coming days, while my backup is still continuing its slow progress.

The one I have is a STSHX-M401TCBM ... do you think I should worry ? :P
Glad you succeeded to get your data back :)
Always interesting to hear experience :)

It's based on the SMART attributes, so I assume it's precise enough. It will probably display some warnings if values go past safe limits. If you use DiskCheckup, you'll see what those attributes really mean, it has tool tips for each one. And if you see something strange or don't understand it, always google it.

Congrats on the new Toshiba and good that others recommend it too. :)

Edit:
Probably not, especially as an external drive you'll use it less often, but don't keep important data only on it. Buy another external drive in the fallowing months if you save some money. Preferably WD or Toshiba. :P

Oh, okay. Hard to say if there are any noticeable benefits. I think some of the updates are just-in-case: they fix problems that occur with specific hardware combos in specific instances. And if your system isn't one of those affected then the new driver shouldn't hurt. Kinda like some of the game patches we get: "Fixes problem with AMD Catalyst blah blah blah".

For myself, the biggest benefit has come at times that the OP is facing: fresh installation of Windows, and you'd like to get the drivers installed and updated as soon as possible instead of Windows finding them piecemeal over the next couple weeks... if it finds them at all. For that purpose I really like SlimDrivers - has helped out every time I've reinstalled Windows, and even worked when I put Win7 on the NUC and had no drivers to start.

I wouldn't call SlimDrivers must-have, but it has been helpful and reliable when I've used it.

I have really no idea, but the fact that after a quick search, I found no important results about failures seems to be good news.

I decided to try it, and need little help.

On my ASUS ROG (Windows 7), the SlimDrivers scan found 9 items to update (but maybe some were duplicates, e.g. the MS mouse was listed twice). I updated the mouse driver, it went fine (I said no when it wanted to install some Microsoft Software Center utility, no thanks).

I updated the audio HD drivers... at first try it would not proceed from downloading/installing the drivers, but on a second try later it worked and got installed.

I updated "Storage controllers" = "Standard ACHI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller"... problems big time. It updated, it wanted to install "Intel Rapid Storage Technology", no idea what that is (I guess I need to google for it) but I said yes, it did its stuff and wanted to reboot the machine, but on the next reboot it would hang forever on the loading Windows screen. I forced a power down, but on the next reboot it did the same.

Luckily I had told SlimDrivers to create a restore point, so Windows took that into use so now I am in the situation before the Storage Controller update.

Any idea what happened? Are those Storage Controller driver updates so risky that one should possibly just not update them? I see the Acer laptop (Win10) also wants to update the Storage Controller. Or was it that damn "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" that messed up things? I want reliability over speed, so I'd rather install Intel Reliable Storage Technology over that.

Or is that Intel Rapid something related to SSDs? I have only HDDs on this ASUS laptop.

Aw, geez, I suggest something to use and things go to shit the first time you try it!

I ~think~ those storage controller and Intel etc drivers are part of the chipset package I mentioned initially, which could include Northbridge and Southbridge stuff, audio, integrated graphics, storage drivers, LAN, and other stuff all in one package. So for instance you get a scan with 15 results but you pick one of those from the chipset package. With the update it maybe takes care of 6 of those things so now you have just 9 left.

For what it's worth, I haven't had any problems with any of the updates using that software. Not sure what happened in your case. But hey - it prompts the user to create a Restore Point and that did the trick. And since you were able to narrow it down to one specific update that caused problems, certainly you can try going directly through Intel for that particular driver.

Well, not really. It seems like a great tool, and I applaud it for automatically offering to make a restore point before each driver update, so it was quite easy later for me to get back to the situation before the driver installation.

Also, on the Acer everything went smoothly, even that Storage Controller update went fine. It is just this Windows 7 ASUS ROG which doesn't seem to like that particular update. I got everything else updated on the ASUS, though. So for now I just let that Storage Controller remain unupdated, until I figure out what is wrong. Maybe it is specifically that "Intel Rapid Storage" installation that causes the problem, so I might still retry it again by cancelling that utility update (which I figure will mean it installs drivers, but not that Rapid Storage utility, which by the description seemed more like some SSD stuff).

So while it is common sense, I think it is important to stress that when updating drivers (e.g. with SlimDrivers utility), make a new restore point before each update (SlimDrivers asks if it should create a restore point, just say YEEEES). So when something goes wrong like it did for me, no sweat.

Yeah, some of those other updates I chose knocked out several other updates. Also particularly in this ASUS, when I updated all the other items (leaving the Storage Controller for the last), the naming of that Storage Controller update changed:

"Standard ACHI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller" became "Intel 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA ACHI Controller" in the SlimDrivers update list.

Anyway, when I retried the update (as the last item), same symptom, it would just stay forever loading Windows (I let it be there for the whole night, no progress). So I just restored again the restore point that SlimDrivers had created, and I am back on the working ASUS (without the storage controller update).

Maybe I'll still try e.g. Intel's own driver scanner, but on the Acer it couldn't find shit.

Have you tried this method, in case it's not actually the Intel Rapid Storage?

From intel's page see what version is that you need and then download the floppy version (f6flpy-x64.zip). Extract it and update manually from the Device Manager. Right click on the component -> Update Driver Software -> Browse my computer for driver software.

I presume I was now able to update the storage controller successfully. I tried it the third time with SlimDrivers utility, this time hitting Cancel right when it offered to install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology utility.

I presume the relevant drives still got installed without Rapid because now SlimDrivers scan says everything is up to date. Since my ASUS is still booting up properly, I guess that Intel Rapid was the culprit then.

I recall there were two driver updates which also wanted to install some additional utilities. One was this storage controller, the other was the MS mouse driver update (it wanted to install some MS Software Center utility or somesuch). So now I said no to both of those offers.

I hate it when peripherals want to install additional crapware utilities to the system which are not really needed, especially for mundane peripherals like mice. A mouse is a mouse is a mouse, and I tend to use several on the same PC, e.g. just today I swapped that old MS mouse to another old HP mouse. Do i now want to install also some "HP Software Center" utility for one freaking mouse, just because I am using their mouse at the moment? Ummm, no.

I guess updating all the drivers with SlimDrivers was beneficial after all, because:

1. I've always had a bit of problem with the ASUS ROG audio with games, in that quite often it pauses for a second or two, where some sound kinda gets stuck, looping. I first thought it was a problem mainly with certain Steam games using the Half-life 2 engine (like Team Fortress 2 I think), but I noticed it in quite many other games as well, like Wing Commander Prophecy etc.

The problem was quite irritating in online FPS games like TF2 because when that "audio pause" hit me, I'd be a sitting duck to other players. I quite often died for that damn audio pause, unable to do nothing while enemy kept shooting at me.

Playing Team Fortress 2 after that audio update, it appears those looping audio pauses have become at least much less frequent. Much more pleasant this way.

2. I guess I had not installed any USB 3.0 drivers after the latest Windows 7 clean install, so I've been using my external hard drives in slower USB 2.0 speeds. I just hope these USB 3.0 drivers are more reliable than the ones I tried a couple of years ago (copying big amounts of data to/from an external USB 3.0 hard drive would usually cause the hard drive to be disconnected abruptly during the copying process).

In defraggler my dying drive is specified to have a good health, but I suppose it's because it can't get all the SMART data.
Okay, I'll take a look at it !
Yeah :D That was a very nice finding for this price, thanks again ;)
Well... It was supposed to be the drive for backups :P And the dying drive added a big unplanned expense, so... I hope it will last at least 1-2 years without hiccups. And I hope I haven't just spend several days backing up everything in a drive who is only waiting to suddenly die too, or awaiting to corrupt my data.
But I have the hope things can go well sometimes *cross fingers* And yes, I'll only use it to do backups, so not accessing & manipulating files a lot everyday should help hopefully :)
But next time, even if it won't be soon, I'll certainly go Toshiba or WD ;)

Ah, nice to hear, that's already a lot reassuring :) (and what GR00T said here)

I'll certainly try it Wednesday too (it or maybe DriverPack Solution, I'll see, maybe the two !), when I'll install Windows ;) I'll let you how it'll work for me if I try it :)

You really seems very unlucky with comp', you've all my sympathy :P

So, some news !
After 48 hours of continuous (& very slow) copy, I almost saved everything I really wanted so it's great ! :)
Now I'm copying the last less crucial files which will take quite some time too, but my plans are... to download an image of windows 7 for the future install, and... waiting for my new hdd which should arrive Tuesday (I miss my comp', I hope things will go smoothly XD).
Concerning this : how shall I proceed ? I'm mean... I simply put the hdd into the comp' (bios will recognize it automatically?), turn the comp' on, put the dvd or USB and launch the install of Windows 7 ? (of course I'll go into the bios to start through the dvd :)) The hdd doesn't need any special operation before windows installation ?
Are there advices for the Windows installation ? Should I do several partitions like I'm planning to do ?