CrystalDiskInfovs
TrueNAS
TrueNAS: When drive health needs central monitoring and alerting across many disks rather than per machine
CrystalDiskInfo
Free Windows tool that reads S.M.A.R.T. data from drives and warns before they fail
As of 31 August 2026, CrystalDiskInfo is free to use. Reads the health attributes your drives already record and shows them plainly, including NVMe wear and remaining life. Softwr lists it under Utilities. CrystalDiskInfo is made by Crystal Dew World, available on Windows.
Overview
What CrystalDiskInfo does
CrystalDiskInfo reads the S.M.A.R.T. attributes that hard drives and solid state drives maintain internally and presents them as a health assessment with the raw values behind it. For a mechanical drive that means reallocated sectors, pending sectors and power-on hours. For an SSD it means total bytes written, remaining life percentage and, on NVMe devices, the wear indicators the drive reports to the operating system. A summary status of good, caution or bad sits at the top, with every attribute listed underneath so you can form your own view. Its practical value is early warning. Reallocated and pending sector counts climb before a mechanical drive fails outright, and SSD wear indicators tell you whether a write-heavy workload is consuming the endurance rating faster than the replacement cycle assumes. The tool can sit in the notification area, poll on a schedule and raise an alert or send email when an attribute crosses a threshold, which turns a one-off check into a standing one on machines that matter. Two things are worth knowing before deploying it. It is MIT licensed and genuinely free including in a business, which several other free utilities on Windows are not. But the widely circulated Shizuku edition ships anime artwork and voice packs, and organisations that install it without checking end up explaining it; the standard edition exists precisely for that reason. It is also Windows only, it needs administrator rights, and many USB enclosures do not pass S.M.A.R.T. data through at all, so external drives frequently show nothing regardless of their condition.
What people use it for
- Checking the true condition of a second-hand drive before trusting data to it
- Watching SSD endurance on write-heavy machines such as build servers and video workstations
- Getting early warning of mechanical failure while a backup can still be taken
- Auditing power-on hours and wear across a small fleet of machines one at a time
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about CrystalDiskInfo.
- Many USB enclosures do not pass S.M.A.R.T. commands through, so external drives often report nothing at all and users read that as a healthy result.
- It is Windows only, and there is no central console, so checking a fleet means visiting each machine or scripting an alternative.
- A good status is not a prediction: drives fail suddenly with clean attributes, and treating the summary as an assurance leads people to skip backups.
- The Shizuku edition ships anime artwork and voice packs, which is unsuitable on company machines and is often downloaded by mistake because it is the more visible option.
- Vendors define raw attribute values inconsistently, so the same number means different things on different drives and the detailed view needs interpretation to be useful.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of CrystalDiskInfo
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CrystalDiskInfovsGParted
GParted: If the next step is repartitioning or moving data off a failing drive
- CrystalDiskInfovsFreeFileSync
FreeFileSync: To get data off a drive that is reporting caution, before deciding what to do with it
Pricing
What CrystalDiskInfo costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
CrystalDiskInfo
Free
- MIT licensed
- Commercial use permitted
- All features in the free download
- Standard and themed editions
- Community support
Capabilities
Features
S.M.A.R.T. reporting
Every attribute the drive records, with raw values as well as the summary health status
NVMe support
Wear levelling, total bytes written and remaining life for modern solid state drives
Threshold alerts
Background monitoring with notification or email when an attribute crosses a limit
Temperature monitoring
Drive temperature history, which is the neglected cause of throttling in dense enclosures
Standard and Shizuku editions
A plain interface and a themed one, which matters when installing on company machines
MIT licensed
Free including for commercial use, with no personal-use restriction
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Can I use it in a business?
Yes. It is MIT licensed with no personal-use restriction, which distinguishes it from several other free Windows utilities.
Why does my external drive show no data?
Most USB bridge chips do not pass S.M.A.R.T. commands through. Connecting the drive directly by SATA or NVMe usually reveals the attributes.
Does a caution status mean I should replace the drive immediately?
It means an attribute has crossed a vendor threshold, most often reallocated sectors. Back up now, then decide. It is a warning, not a countdown.
What is the difference between the editions?
Function is identical. The Shizuku edition adds themed artwork and voice packs; the standard edition is the plain one you want on a work machine.
Keep looking
Where to go from CrystalDiskInfo
- CrystalDiskInfo alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- CrystalDiskInfo pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- CrystalDiskInfo badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Utilities softwareThe full category
- Best Utilities softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for CrystalDiskInfo, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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