Check SSD Health With CrystalDiskInfo: Free Download

Drives rarely fail without warning signs. CrystalDiskInfo reads the S.M.A.R.T. data that SSDs and hard drives record about themselves and turns it into a simple status: Good, Caution or Bad.

What does CrystalDiskInfo show?

• Health status: A colour-coded verdict for each drive, plus a percentage for SSDs.
• Temperature: The current drive temperature, with optional alerts.
• S.M.A.R.T. attributes: Reallocated sectors, power-on hours, total writes and more.
• Drive details: Model, firmware, interface, transfer mode and supported features.

Picking an edition

1. Downloads are on crystalmark.info, the developer’s site (Crystal Dew World).
2. Choose the Standard Edition. Themed editions (such as Shizuku and Kurei Kei) work the same way with a different look.
3. Choose the installer or the zip (portable) version, run it, and your drives appear at the top of the window.

Reading the result

NVMe drives are supported on Windows 10 or Server 2016 and later. A “Caution” status is a reason to back up your data soon, not a guarantee the drive will fail; a “Good” status is also no substitute for regular backups.

Keeping an eye on drives over time

One check tells you how a drive is doing today, but trends tell you more. CrystalDiskInfo can stay resident in the notification area, where it shows drive temperatures as a small icon and refreshes automatically at an interval you choose. According to the developer’s manual, the icon background turns yellow from 50 °C and red from 55 °C, and alarms for temperature and health status are set from the icon’s menu. Email alerts are available too, but they need .NET Framework 4.8 or later.

External drives often cause confusion. The manual says most single-drive USB enclosures can be read, while products that hold several drives are often unsupported, so a drive missing from the list is not necessarily a faulty one.