Portable CrystalDiskInfo

It's often said that preventing is easier to do than actually treating or repairing. This is also true when it comes to computers and all their hardware components.

Even though OSes have come a long way since the early days, they're still not well adept at warning you about potential HDD or SSD failures.

That's exactly why an app such as CrystalDiskInfo can become a lifesaver (at least in certain situations).

In short, CrystalDiskInfo is a hard drive usage/health monitoring software. To be more precise, it's designed to be used more of an "early warning" tool regarding your computer's storage solution status, and not diagnostics.

It's a tool that should come in handy for users who often put their computers through intensive hard drive activities which, we all know, can lead to some serious issues, the ultimate one being data loss.

You can either install the app on your system, or make use of Portable CrystalDiskInfo which offers a lot more freedom of usage, but it also doesn't affect your OS' registry.

CrystalDiskInfo is a very basic app with a streamlined interface that displays detailed hardware specifications. These include the drive model name, the disk size, its firmware, serial number, the number of partitions, interface type, transfer mode, as well as various other parameters.

Some of the extra parameters include the buffer size, the NV cache size, and the rotation rate.

One of the app's best features is the fact that it displays the health status and the running temperature of your HDD, SDD, or even other external drives. A good way to anticipate potential disk failures and prevent data loss is to keep an eye on the S.M.A.R.T. attributes.

They allow you to view the basic thresholds and the raw values on the read error rate, the spin-up time, the seek error rate, the spin retry count, as well as the current and worst values.

There are some nifty little touches made to make life better for the users as well. For example, all the displayed information can be easily sent to your computer's clipboard, for later reference.

Other useful features include the ability to generate graphs for most indicators, AAM/APM control and auto adaption, a few disk search options, as well as Intel RAIR and USB support.

To conclude, Portable CrystalDiskInfo is a very good tool for all those who want to keep a close eye on the health of HDDs, SSDs, and even other external storage units. It's easy to work with, it's extremely lightweight, and if you opt for the portable version, it doesn't even require installation.