When the solid state disks (SSD) first became available for the common user, they were very expensive and not many people could afford them. But now they have not only become cheaper but they are also available in much larger capacities than ever before. So now if you still keep using those slower, bulky, mechanical hard disk drives (HDD) then you are missing out on a multitude of benefits offered by the SSD’s. I personally have just upgraded to the SanDisk Ultra 240GB SSD. It came with a very useful software called SanDisk SSD Dashboard.
I am not sure if the same software can be used with the SSD’s of other manufacturers, but it offers all the possible utilities to work with your SanDisk SSD that you can imagine. The SanDisk SSD Dashboard includes tools for analysis of the disk (including the disk model, capacity, firmware version, and SMART attributes) and firmware updates. It can be used to configure the SSD parameters to bring the best out of your newly bought SanDisk SSD.
As you launch the software, it displays the basic status of your SSD like the disk capacity, remaining life, disk temperature and the interface speed. Under the “Performance” section, you can see a graphical chart of the disk write and disk read speeds to see the chronological disk performance data for your SSD.
The software comes with many utilities that can be used to securely erase the disk, sanitize the disk (this performs a very thorough disk erase), perform a crypto erase, look at the S.M.A.R.T diagnostics data or check up drive and system details. You can also access some of the third-party software (like antivirus software, disk cloning software, and anti-theft software) by clicking on the buttons given at the bottom of the window.
You can download the SanDisk SSD Dashboard software from http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/15108/~/sandisk-ssd-dashboard-support-information.