For Windows users, common questions you may be asking yourself is when might your drive fail and when is it time to replace the drive?

The answer to these questions depends on the type of drive you have.

Most SSDs last longer than their hard drive counterpart. We recommend that any hard disk drives over 20,000 hours be monitored closely and 60,000 hours for SSDs. If the Reallocation Sector Count is rapidly increasing, your drive might be near failure. In SSDs, it’s measured in Media Wearout Indicator, which shows how many good cells you have remaining inside the SSD. 

Monitoring Your Drive

To make monitoring of your hard drives easier, a useful tool is CrystalDiskInfo. It’s an open-source program developed by a Japanese developer for reading and monitoring disk drive status.

The most important future we’ll focus on is email alerts. It allows you to use SMTP to email alerts regarding your disks. 

The setup is straightforward. However note that if you’re using Gmail, you must enable less secure mode in your email settings for SMTP. You can setup the mail settings under Function > Alert Features > Mail settings. Once the Test Mail is successfully delivered you can enable email alert under Function > Alert Features > Alert Mail.

The main screen is also intuitive, allowing at a quick glance to see if your hard drive or SSD might be having issues. 

The developer also has an online manual to document all functions within his program.