Best hard drive health software?

"Looks like they have a newer version"
Speecy Free hasn't been updated for nearly 3 years.

jmatt said:

"Looks like they have a newer version"
Speecy Free hasn't been updated for nearly 3 years.

My PC is 10-years old - I installed it years ago and probably used it a handful of times. Per their site, the current version is Win10 compatible.


System Requirements
Windows 10, 8.1, 7, Vista and XP. Including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but not RT tablet editions.

I was referring to version 1.32.740 which was released May 2018.
It applied to these OS's
Windows 10 32/64 bit
Windows 8 32/64 bit
Windows 7 32/64 bit
Windows Vista 32/64 bit
Windows XP 32/64 bit

Maybe you have a later version.

jmatt said:

I was referring to version 1.32.740 which was released May 2018.
It applied to these OS's
Windows 10 32/64 bit
Windows 8 32/64 bit
Windows 7 32/64 bit
Windows Vista 32/64 bit
Windows XP 32/64 bit

Maybe you have a later version.

It's a neat tool. I will install the latest and give it another try. Thanks for the suggestion.

RolandJS said:

Microsoft and many other 3rd parties have great tools for almost every SSD and HDD in existence; I learned a lot from this very informative thread! Because I have Western Digital hybrid drives, I have been using licensed HardDisk Sentinel on both of my two Windows 7 laptops. It is a tiny "NORAD", it pops up information real soon after Windows loads. It has given "YellowNotice" when HDD was beginning to develop read/write problems. Because of those early popups, I was able to swiftly make full image backups of the OS partitions and the data partition onto external media - before HDS began its "RedAlert". I had to replace two hybrids because I realized that both a scheduled defragger and my on-demand defragging was a big contributor to the 2 HDDs demise. I solidly vote for licensed HDS, even though other very good tools are available, within Microsoft and from 3rd parties.

Great feedback on HDS. Given the low cost (especially with the 40% off promo), it seems to be a totally worthwhile insurance policy. Though it wouldn't have helped save my last drive that was fried by a PSU gone bad

Speccy Release Notes v1.32.740 (20 May 2018)
Speccy - Release Notes

I had Speccy Free in my laptop Windows 10 Pro and I can't remember when was the last time I've used it
Updated from whatever version it was to its latest version 1.32.774 which isn't recorded in their release notes that I could find

@lbeachmike, what stage are you at, at what you want to accomplish?

RolandJS said:

"...Though it wouldn't have helped save my last drive that was fried by a PSU gone bad" Very true! However, the majority of SSD and HDD failures are not lightning-sudden-death, most of the time, one can swiftly enact backup routine, or at least copy down needed data folders and files. HDS for me has been great in forecasting imminent doom.

Agreed. That PSU actually dealt sudden death to not one, not two, but THREE hard drives. I have those drives set aside to one day swap the controller boards and recover them, if I ever get around to it.

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MeAndMyComputer said:

@lbeachmike, what stage are you at, at what you want to accomplish?

I am good now. After lots of checks, it looks like my SSD is healthy and the file corruption was likely a consequence of power down/reset while Win10 had hung. At this point, I'm just soaking in all the additional info coming into this thread ...

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To more thoroughly answer @MeAndMyComputer, I was initially attempting to upgrade to Windows 10, which presented a series of challenges. At this point I think I'm going to install VirtualBox and add a Win10 instance there instead. Was going to poke around the forum to see if others have had good success with this.