I’m using an 8TB WD drive and wondering if manufacturer-specific tools like WD Dashboard offer better insights compared to general diagnostic tools. Are they more effective for monitoring health, firmware updates, or performance optimization? If you’ve used these utilities, I’d love to hear your thoughts or recommendations! 
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Third party tools offer more honest appraisals of a drive’s health. That’s because manufacturers will consider any storage device whose SMART attributes have not fallen below a critical threshold value as still serviceable. A third party tool will tell you if a drive is sick but serviceable.
Otherwise, all SMART tools report exactly the same data, but differ in their interpretations.
Why do SMART tools report attributes differently?
