CrystalDiskInfo is one of the tools we turn to when we want as much useful data as possible about our system’s hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) as well as many external drives. This free system utility monitors the health and status of your drives and displays the information in a compact, easy-to-read interface. CrystalDiskInfo monitors and displays your drives’ temperature and SMART data, and it can even alert you when things start to go wrong. CrystalDiskInfo’s user interface displays your drives’ health status and temperature sensor data (where available) in a bar along the top of the window.
Administrative Privileges
CrystalDiskInfo needs the administrator privileges to work.
Supported Disks (HDD/SSD)
- CrystalDiskInfo supports only IDE (Parallel ATA) and Serial ATA disks connected internal ATA controller.
- CrystalDiskInfo supports a part of USB-HDD.
- CrystalDiskInfo does not support RAID disks and IDE (Parallel ATA) and Serial ATA disks connected external ATA controller.
General Info here
Hard disk are used to store all types of digital data. But they are very susceptible to physical damage. It can develop bad sectors which can cause the loss of data. It can suffer mechanical failure of motor used in hard disk. Most of the time these hard disk failure don’t arise suddenly but slowly takes its. Almost every hard disk has SMART monitoring built in hard disk and SSD which can be used to predict the failure of hard disk. This is where CrystalDiskinfo comes in which can tell you what the hard disk health status is. It can warn you days or even months before the hard disk full failure. Bad condition of hard disk health tells that hard disk can fail anytime and you can backup your data while there is still time left. Also consider taking hard disk to the service center of that particular hard disk company for repair or replacement.
A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB connection and Intel RAID.
CrystalDiskInfo is a HDD/SSD utility which supports S.M.A.R.T.
- Supports a part of external USB disks
- Monitoring health status and temperature
- Alert Mail
- Graph of S.M.A.R.T. information
- Control AAM/APM settings
more info at http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/manual-en/KeyFeatures.html
Operating system requirement
- Microsoft Windows 2012/8/7/2008/Vista/2003/XP [x86/x64]
DOWNLOAD CrystalDiscInfo
- http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/crystaldiskinfo.html
- http://www.afterdawn.com/software/system_tools/system_information/crystaldiskinfo.cfm
- http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/CrystalDiskInfo.shtml
- http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html
INSTALLATION & CONFIGURATION
- During installation select “I do not accept” for hotspot shield or else it will install hotspot shield software in addition to CrystalDiscinfo.
- Most of the hard disk allows setting of AAM/APM.
- AAM stands for automatic acoustic management. As shown below AAM has two extreme ends first is “silent” and second is “performance”. You can put the slider between or at these ends. Silent means you want your hard disk to produce noise as less as possible. Performance means you want more performance in terms of speed and don’t care how much noise the hard disk produces.
- APM stands for Advanced power management. It has two extreme ends. First is “min power” which means you want as least as possible power to be consumed by the hard disk. Second is “performance” which means you want more performance it terms of read/write speed with increased power consumption.
- You can get an alert sound when there is something wrong in your hard disk. You can also get email alert.
- You can set this software to stay in notification area by selecting “resident” as shown below. With this the temperature of hard disk is shown in notification area along with the CrystalDiscInfo running minimized in notification area.
- As shown below notification area is showing temperature of two hard disk. For laptop internal hard disk temp. should not increase 50 degree Celsius in normal operation and should not increase 55 degree Celsius for heavy operation. For desktop internal HD and for all external HD temp. should not increase 40 degree celsius in normal usage and should not increase 45 degree celsius in heavy usage. If hard disk temperature is very high then the cooling system of the computer needs improvement by cleaning or replacement of fan.
- As shown below you can select another hard disk in your computer to show it health status if more than one hard disk/ssd is connected to your computer.
