Review: CrystalDiskInfo
CrystalDiskInfo is a very good SMART utility, and everyone should have one. In case you don’t know about it, SMART is a technology built into modern hard drives that allows the HD to report on its own state of wear. This can be invaluable.
Certain parts in a hard drive (bearings, for example) are subject to wear over time, and SMART allows one to appreciate the current state of any hard drive. In the past, however, I’ve had problems finding a decent utility.
I haven’t done admin in some years, so I haven’t been actively looking, but a friend recommended CrystalDiskInfo to me, so I thought I’d give it a try. I’m glad I did.
Just install and run it (and connect a USB disk if you want to check it) and select the individual hard drive from the menu at the top. It will give you a one-word status summary (“Good”, “Caution”, or “Bad”) along with the drive’s temperature.
If you’re in a production setting, don’t use anything other than “Good” hard drives. Data loss is very hard on businesses. It’s not fun for individuals either, so I won’t use anything other than “Good” drives for my own data.
It is worth noting that SMART is not a cure-all. A “Good”-rated hard drive can still fail, because SMART only monitors things that wear out. It can’t tell you whether a solid-state component (a transistor or a chip) might fail, because such things don’t wear out, they just fail randomly. So be sure to back up your data, even though your hard drives rate Good with the software.