Crystaldiskinfo: what is it and how to check the health of our ssd?

CrystalDiskInfo

We warn you: to show you the characteristics and functionalities of CrystalDiskInfo we will use the standard version of the program.

To install any of these three versions, we will have to download an installer in.exe format.

The first thing it will ask us (apart from some system permissions) is to select the language, to which we can choose between English or Japanese . Afterwards, we will have to accept some licenses and then establish the place of installation. After more or less a minute of waiting, the installation process should have finished and you can start it.

The first thing you will see will be a screen like the following:

CrystalDiskInfo: SSD drive

In our case we have two storage units (an SSD and an HDD), so we can switch between memories. As you can imagine, the data changes slightly, since the technologies are different. In the case of the second screen (which shows the HDD) we will see something like this:

CrystalDiskInfo - HDD Drive

The first thing that stands out is the great indicator that the "State of Health" shows . It is a great button that tells us in a few words how our storage unit is. In most cases it should be "OK" unless the disk is damaged or has been used many times and has little life expectancy left.

Likewise, the current memory temperature panel also stands out quite a bit . The degrees that they show us are in real time and if for any reason you want, you can change it to the Imperial System (ºF - Fahrenheit) .

In the center of the screen you will see general information about the disk such as its model name, firmware and more.

On the other hand, below you will see a series of SMART features (Autonomous Monitoring Reporting and Analysis Technology, in Spanish). If your disk allows it, you can see more detailed information on how it is performing in tasks such as boot time or the error rate.

Options

The truth is that this program has a large number of options. They are all divided into 7 tabs on the top bar, so we are going to divide them into small groups.

To begin, we will enter the most superficial and trivial configurations and little by little we will delve into the most important groups.

Irrelevant options

A group with such a name may sound strange to you, but here we will group the configuration options that do not influence the use of the program. Strangely, CrystalDiskInfo does not have few options like this and it seems strange to us that after so many updates they have not optimized it.

A very obvious case is the Disk tab.

As you have already seen, in the sample team we have two memories, an SSD and an HDD . Well, the Disk option is only valid to change the selected unit that we will see on the main screen.

The problem is that we already have this functionality on the same main screen of the application. If we press the button that says "Good 35ºC C:" or "Good 30ºC D:" we can change the unit and also more quickly.

The next thing we will talk about is File .

In some applications it is a remarkably important tab and usually contains some interesting options. However, here we have none of that.

In CrystalDiskInfo , File only contains the Exit option, which has a standardized shortcut (Alt + F4) i that works anywhere on the system. In addition, this action can also be done by pressing the X in the upper right corner of the program.

Finally, we will see one of the least relevant, but that at least changes something remarkable. The last tab to see is Theme .

As in its sister program, Tema helps us change the appearance of the program. We can edit:

The zoom of the program, since we cannot edit as we want the window size Activate or deactivate a green filter Change the font of the letters Choose between 3 themes (if we have other versions of CrystalDiskInfo we will have another number of themes).

For your comparison, we leave you a screenshot of the theme "FlatSquare" next to the font "Monotype Corsiva" (no, it is not a typo) .

Less relevant options

Options in this group will be of little importance, but they have some kind of impact on our interaction with the program. For example, the Language section is not very relevant to the configuration of the program, but if it is in an unknown language we will not be able to use it.

If you have noticed, the program has directly detected that the recommended language is Spanish . However, some words continue in English, such as in CrystalDiskMark .

All the languages we can change are between those two main categories, but we have a third option. "SMART in English" is for the data displayed in the SMART list. appear in English, the native language of this technology. Thus, if we want to analyze the results together with a manual or guide, we can more easily find the variables.

In the Help section we have the typical.

The first three options take us to the CrystalDiskInfo website, the CrystalDewWorld website and the SMART technology Wikipedia page. For the different queries we have, we will have a source to turn to.

On the other hand, "About CrystalDiskInfo" opens a small window where general information about the application appears. We will see things like the version or the release date of the last update.

Finally, we are going to talk about the Edit tab. In the line of the other two sub-sections, it is not very important for the functioning of CrystalDiskInfo , but it changes some functionalities a little.

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The four options you see change how Ctrl + C (Copy) works . If you press that shortcut with the CrystalDiskInfo window active, you will copy all possible data from all the disks you have.

The first three options will add or remove information to the copied text. Each data block will be marked by an initial title, so you will know what data belongs to that option. Also, the option "ASCII View" will be used to change how certain data of the copy is displayed.

Relevant options

In the end, there is only one option left in this group, but you don't have to fear. The Function tab has enough detail to need its own section.

The first four options help us determine how and how often the data is refreshed:

Refreshes data right now asynchronously Determines how often data is refreshed (1 min - 1440 min) Determines on which drives data refreshes are performed (All / None / Only some memories) Rescan to check for storage drives new.

The Graph option is used to see the behavior of one, several or all of the available memories. We can compare common data such as temperature or some more specific as information obtained via SMART (it is susceptible to errors).

The end of the graphics is bugeada

The next three options are somewhat more passive.

On the one hand, Hide Serial Number only censors the Serial Number with asterisks on the main screen. On the other hand, Meter in the taskbar is used to minimize the application in the taskbar when closing it. Likewise, if this option is activated, when you turn on the application it will start in the background and you will not see any window unfold. Finally, Start with Windows and you can imagine what it is for.

We will leave the next group of three options for last. Before, we will check the last two options, which simply serve as shortcuts to the System Configuration .

As indicated, the first will open the disk manager and the second will open the device manager.

To finish, we will talk about the last trio of options:

The first is a list of checks where we will indicate what actions we want to be alerted to. For example, indicate if we want an alert to sound with a received email and with what tone. The second conglomerate all the advanced options that we can have, which are not few. There are interesting things like changing the System used, hiding the non- SMART data or installing some extra plugins. The last group is also a list of checks, although it will only change small aspects of the program such as IE8 Mode (Internet Explorer 8) .

Final words on CrystalDiskInfo

We hope you understood the article easily and that you have learned something new today. If you have any questions, we recommend you go to the Crystal Dew World website and ask the creators directly. They will surely be able to give you a more accurate answer regarding the program.

On our side, we don't have much more to tell you, so now it's your turn. What do you think about CrystalDiskInfo ? What sections would you change to improve it (either add or remove features)? Share your ideas in the comment box.

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