CrystalDiskInfo vs HdSentinel

[MeepsterNotchy]

Which one is more accurate for health status or drives?

 

[drtweak]

They are both equally good IMO. If it is just to check drive status, crystal disk is always free, easy to use, and less junk.

We have been getting HDSentinel on ALL off our clients servers for reporting and emailing of failing drives and man has it come in handy.

Now USB/SATA/PATA drives Crystal Disk works great but it can not read SAS/SCSI drives unlike HDSentinel (which is why we use that). Crystal Disk also can't read though all of the RAID cards, but then there has been on RAID card (a fairly new and high end RAID card) that HDS can't read though either but otherwise works great.

So it really depends. If it is personal. Just Crystal Disk. If it is on a server and you need email reporting or dealing with SAS/SCSI drives go HDS

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @MeepsterNotchy!

I'd definitely second @drtweak's opinion about the utilities being equally good. Moreover, using a third-party tool together with your HDD's brand-specific diagnostic utility is definitely a good way to benchmark the health and SMART stats of that particular drive. Using the HDD's brand-specific tool is recommended because the SMART health/failure criteria may vary from one HDD manufacturer to another. The most important thing is that a healthy drive should pass all the diagnostic tests from the manufacturer's tool.

Either way, these monitoring/diagnostic utilities definitely won't save you from data loss if you don't do regular backups to multiple locations (on-site as well as off-site). If any of the SMART attributes are failing, this could put your data in jeopardy, so better be safe than sorry and always keep a copy somewhere else!

Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD