Alternatives to CrystalDiskInfo
Reads the health data your drives already record and tells you plainly whether one is dying. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
CrystalDiskInfo
Reads the health data your drives already record and tells you plainly whether one is dying.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as CrystalDiskInfo.
smartmontools
Reads the SMART health data built into disks and runs self-tests, giving advance warning before a drive fails.
smartmontools is command-line only but runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, adds self-tests and scheduled smartd monitoring, and supports SAS and tape drives.
GNOME Disks
A graphical disk utility for GNOME that partitions, formats, benchmarks and images drives on Linux.
GNOME Disks shows SMART health data on Linux inside a graphical tool that also partitions, formats and benchmarks drives, instead of Windows only.
GSmartControl
A graphical interface for smartctl that shows the health of hard drives and SSDs.
GSmartControl is a free, GPL-3.0 graphical front end to smartctl for Windows and Linux that highlights SMART anomalies and runs self-tests, but needs smartmontools installed.
HDDScan
A free Windows utility for testing hard drives and SSDs, reading SMART data and running surface tests.
HDDScan is a free, closed-source Windows utility that reads SMART data and temperature and adds read, verify and erase surface tests, where erase mode destroys data.
Scrutiny
A self-hosted web dashboard for hard drive S.M.A.R.T. monitoring with historical trends and failure thresholds.
Scrutiny is a self-hosted Linux web dashboard with historical SMART trends and failure thresholds, deployed with Docker, so it needs a server and collector rather than a desktop app.
Also worth comparing
These listings name CrystalDiskInfo as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Crucial Storage Executive
Crucial's utility for checking SSD health, updating drive firmware and tuning performance on Crucial SSDs.
CrystalDiskInfo is MIT-licensed and reads health data from drives of any brand with tray alerts, but it cannot install firmware updates on Crucial SSDs.
Kingston SSD Manager
Kingston's utility for monitoring SSD health, updating firmware and securely erasing Kingston drives.
CrystalDiskInfo is MIT-licensed and reports health for drives of any brand with tray alerts, but offers no Kingston firmware updates or secure erase.
Samsung Magician
Samsung's management app for its consumer SSDs, covering firmware updates, health checks, benchmarks and secure erase.
CrystalDiskInfo is MIT-licensed, reads health from drives of any brand with tray alerts, but offers no Samsung firmware updates, benchmarks or secure erase.
SeaTools
Seagate's free diagnostic tool for checking the health of hard drives and SSDs.
CrystalDiskInfo is MIT-licensed and gives a plain health verdict for drives of any brand, with NVMe support and tray alerts, rather than focusing on Seagate.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
HWiNFO
The deepest hardware report and sensor monitor on Windows, free for personal use.
CPU-Z
A tiny freeware window that tells you exactly which processor, board and memory are in a Windows PC.
WizTree
Finds what is eating a Windows disk in seconds by reading the NTFS master file table directly.
CrystalDiskMark
The standard Windows disk benchmark, measuring sequential and random read and write speeds in a few clicks.
AS SSD Benchmark
Quick Windows benchmark tool for testing SSD read and write speeds.
GNU ddrescue
A command-line data recovery tool that copies raw blocks from failing disks while working around read errors.
