Drive utilities

[Spudgun]

I'm looking for recommendations for a universal drive diagnostics and utilities program for Windows 11 - preferably free and non-bloated.

I'd like to run all the usual scans and disk health checks and SMART tests and all that from within one handy little application that's not brand-specific (as between my boot SSD, internal HDD, and external backup drives, I've got most manufacturers covered). Googling tends to bring up "Top 10 Best..." listicles which I don't trust as far as I can throw, so an actual recommendation from someone in the know would be extremely helpful.

[touchingcloth]

Does it have to be for Windows specifically? If I want to run hard drive diagnostics I usually boot into Linux as smartmontools is installed by default on a lot of distributions (often with a graphical interface as well as the command line version).

It looks like smartmontools have an installer for Windows as well as Linux, so even if you don't fancy creating a live boot Linux to use it on you could try that out, though I can't vouch for the Windows version.

Does this Microsoft Windows 10: Built-in tools for Hard Disk Health check article not cover most of what you need, assuming it applies to Windows 11 as well?

[Spudgun]

Thanks - I'll have a look at smartmontools. Will it tell me if and when a drive is dying? Because that's all I really want it for - an early warning system.

(I'm trying to set up a brand new Windows 11 PC and don't really know what I'm doing. I used to use SeaTools, but then got a WD drive that demanded I use its own app, and now my new one seems to want Samsung Magician as well... Hence the quest for a one-size-fits-all solution.)

[touchingcloth]

Thanks - I'll have a look at smartmontools. Will it tell me if and when a drive is dying?

I think it depends. I've only ever used it under Linux, and some distributions (Ubuntu being one) are configured out of the box to pop up alerts if it sees via SMART that a drive has a lot of reallocated sectors or whatever.

You could probably configure it in Windows to do something similar, but it might be easiest to set a weekly reminder (or daily, depending how risk averse you are) reminder to check things.

Personally I've been burned by corrupted hard drives too often that I just run monthly backups of my main stuff now, or ad hoc ones if I have new files I know I can't stand to lose. Especially as all of the data loss I've experienced has been through things like drives becoming disconnected suddenly rather than things that SMART would have detected.