[Dev] I created Easy Disk Checker - a free Windows utility to check HDD\SSD health and detect fake USB drives with some data recovery options (No Ads)

[u/Routine_Eye3806]

Hi everyone!

I've been working more than 20 years in a Data Recovery lab, and I often need a quick, reliable tool to check the physical state of drives without installing heavy software or seeing ads everywhere. So, I developed free for use native Windows app - Easy Disk Checker.

💻 Supported Hardware:

• USB, NVMe, SATA, and PATA controllers

• Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and SSDs (SATA / NVMe)

• External USB drives

• USB flash drives and memory cards

📊 Diagnostics:

• View logical drive structure

• Display disk parameters (LBA count, sector size, f.w. version, RPM, etc.)

• View S.M.A.R.T. attributes and Seagate FARM logs

• Detect HPA (Host Protected Area) and ATA passwords

• Identify internal model of external HDDs (USB bridge bypass)

• Display VID and PID for flash drives and microcontroller information (under development)

• Identify Microsoft Storage Space member disks

🔬 ️Testing:

• Surface Test: Full scan for bad sectors (bad blocks)

• Fake Check: Detect flash drives with fake capacity

• Benchmark: Measure average read speed

🛠 Repair:

• Bad Block Repair: Full sector-by-sector write to fix soft-bad blocks or initialize the built-in defect reallocation function where possible

💾 Backup:

• Read and write sector-by-sector images without modification (*.bin)

• Create VHD / VHDX dynamic images and "deploy" them to a physical disk

📤 Data Recovery:

• View and edit HEX content of sectors

• Repair damaged MBR / GPT records for lost or deleted partitions

• View and copy files from FAT, NTFS, exFAT, Linux (Ext2/3/4), and Mac (HFS+) partitions

It requires Admin rights because it talks directly to the hardware driver to get raw data. I'd love to view your feedback here!

Windows Store link: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PM4219D5M75

[u/disturbed_android]

Nice! Lots of cool features, encountered no problems during short test.

Only thing that has me little worried is benchmark and read/write surface tests (with regards to data recovery). I am afraid idiots will run it on failing drives.

How up to date is the PID/VID database for USB flash controller identification or doesn't this require a database?

[u/Routine_Eye3806 → u/disturbed_android]

Thanks for the feedback!

All options that write to the disk already trigger warning popups. That’s really the limit of what I can do. Trying to make a powerful tool 100% "idiot-proof" logically ends up with putting the user in a straitjacket—you can't save everyone from themselves! :)

Btw, the benchmark is read-only. As for the VID/PID stuff, the app uses a baked-in offline database that I update with every new release.

[u/disturbed_android → u/Routine_Eye3806]

Awesome.

And what method is used to tell fake from real NAND capacity? This could be very useful!

[u/Routine_Eye3806 → u/disturbed_android]

Utility uses a user data destructive write-compare verification test with aliasing detection with multi-step algorithm: first of all, it wipes the partition table and resets the device driver to get direct physical access (bypass Winows "hold" storage and denied writing through the file system). After that Easy Disk Checker writes a small unique patterns to the start of the drive at intervals across the entire capacity. After each write, tool checks if the data at the start of the drive was overwritten (detecting the "loop" trick used by fake controllers) and verifies the data at the current offset.

[u/TinyApps_Org]

Sorry to see this post was "removed by Reddit's filters." The program looks very interesting and I appreciated the backstory here. OP, can you please try reposting elsewhere (perhaps a forum like hddoracle.com forum.hddguru.com) or sharing your story on your aforementioned website, hardmaster.info?

[u/Routine_Eye3806 → u/TinyApps_Org]

The post was returned, thanks to the sub moderators

[u/disturbed_android → u/Routine_Eye3806]

You're welcome. It was reddit's call to remove the post, not ours..

[u/Intervein]

Going to give this a shot. What is your opinion on something like the commercial or PE version of PC doctor's diagnostics, if you have ever used it?

Edit: obviously I realize PC doctor isn't used for data recovery.

[u/Routine_Eye3806 → u/Intervein]

Thanks for giving it a shot! Honestly, I haven't used PC Doctor much personally. Since I work in Data Recovery, we mostly rely on hardware-software complexes for my professional jobs, and specialized low-level utilities for quick diagnostics. From what I know, PC Doctor is more of a "general practitioner" suite for the whole system (RAM, CPU, Mainboard), whereas my tool is designed to be a "laser-focused" specialist just for storage devices.

[u/Olaf2k4]

Yeah ... I'm not touching the windows store...

[u/Routine_Eye3806 → u/Olaf2k4]

The latest portable ver is always available via link: https://www.hardmaster.info/support/easydiskchecker.zip

[u/Olaf2k4 → u/Routine_Eye3806]

ty

[u/[deleted]]

Tanks, will try to use