If you don't perform regular backups then I'd say it was essential that you use a tool like HDD Health. The program continually monitors your PC for tell tale signs that your hard drive is about to die due to corruption or plain and simple burn out. The program sits in your system tray and monitors the performance of your hard drive at regular intervals. It continually performs minor diagnostic tests to see if anything irregular is happening. The program utilises Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) however and unless your hard drive supports this (which most modern ones do) this program won't be of much use to you. The program issues alerts in the manner of your choosing - which basically means via email, pop-up messages (which can get rather annoying), net messages or event logging. It's very light on resources although the fact that it is continually working on your hard drive means that occasionally you might expect some slow down of your PC's operations.

A great tool for anyone who does not backup regularly and is worried about the heavy use of their hard drive

Download HDD Health 3.3.220 in Softonic

The pattern in SpaceSniffer is animated not only in terms of size, but also color. As you hover your mouse over the squares, they'll light up. You can also double click on them to browse their content and go up or down the folder structure. But the really striking feature about Spacesniffer is that the square pattern changes in real time: download a file from the Web and it will immediately be included in the pattern; delete a folder and its correspondent square will be removed accordingly.

SpaceSniffer includes a text field that enables you to filter result by using a simple syntax that's thoroughly explained in the accompanying documentation. SpaceSniffer's settings menu let you configure color combinations and animation effects, which is nice because sometimes the pattern can get a bit overwhelming with too much data. Too bad there's no option to generate a report.

SpaceSniffer is a really original disk space analyzer that displays space distribution in squares and updates data in real time.

Download SpaceSniffer 1.1.3.1 in Softonic

DFT microcode automatically logs significant error events, such as hard drive errors and builds a history of all reassigned sectors. This log is kept in a special reserved area of the drive which you can then use for technical analysis by the manufacturer or technician. DFT microcode also performs a mechanical analysis of the hard drive in real time. Parameters such as disk shift, servo stability, and Repeatable Runout (RRO) are calculated by reading the servo's Position Error Signal (PES) and analyzing the patterns in the PES. This is an interesting new test for hard drives - the signals that control the actuator are also used to analyze the mechanical status of the disk stack.

DFT microcode also supports the creation and use of a special protected "diagnostic partition" on the media. This volume is a separate range of sector addresses that can be used to contain the DFT software and other diagnostic software.

If you have a Hitachi manufactured drive, this tool can help you diagnose difficult problems although without a certified technician to analyse the results, they won't mean much to you.

Download IBM - Hitachi Drive Fitness Test 4.11 in Softonic

First, the good news. Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery provides a simple interface for rescuing your images. You have three options - Data Recovery, Resume Recovery or Create Image. The application recovers your images by scanning your hard drive. If you know a little about where the images might be located, or what type of file they are, you can filter the search by hard drive sector or camera/image type. If you know this information, use it - if you don't, the scan can take a very long time.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery also allows you to save the results of the scan for later use, or create an image of part of your hard drive. This will be a help if bits of the drive are corrupt, and may allow you to recover images at a later stage. The program also provides decent offline help, and despite not having many configuration options, is very easy to use. Now for the bad news: Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery doesn't actually allow you to repair/recover your files in trial mode.

Although this is disappointing, Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery gives every indication that the full version would perform perfectly. Add this to the fact that the program recovers much more than 'just' photos, and it begins to look like a good option for a specific task.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery is an efficient program - it's just a shame about the trial limitations.

Download Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery 4.1 in Softonic

Download TreeSize Free 2.5.1.149 in Softonic

While this is probably something we don't need to do everyday, CrystalDiskMark comes in very handy when your hard drive's performance falls too short of your expectations, or when you think there’s a problem with it.

CrystalDiskMark analyzes your hard drives by running a series of tests and displaying the results on the screen. Unfortunately no information is given about what these tests really do or what results you should expect. In any case, once the analysis is finished you can copy the data directly to the Cipboard.

CrystalDiskMark is an easy way to detect any possible physical problem on your hard drive.

Download CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1a in Softonic

Download Disk Bench 2.6.2.0 in Softonic

With TDP x-Ray Lite you can easily find the answer to that question, and in a very graphical way. This application analyzes the contents of your hard drive and displays it in a colorful pie chart, where each section corresponds to a specific folder or file and is sized accordingly. That is, the bigger the section, the more space that folder or file takes on your hard drive.

TDP x-Ray Lite can analyze the complete hard drive or a selected folder. You can also hover over the pie chart to obtain more information about a certain area or right click for more options: zoom in, rescan and explore, among others.

TDP x-Ray Lite is embedded in Windows Explorer, so you can comfortably launch it from the context menu on any folder. The only feature I missed was the ability to export the results to any format (image file or HTML report, for instance).

If you want to know how space is distributed in your hard drive, and which are the largest folders, TDP x-Ray Lite can lend you a hand.

Download TDP x-Ray Lite 2.1 in Softonic

As the principal location for data storage, your hard drive is one of the components on your PC that requires the most attention. Fortunately, Hard Disk Sentinel offers a series of utilities that helps improve its performance.

Although not common issues, overheating, vibration, and other errors can adversely affect the performance of your hard drive. With various notifications and monitoring methods, Hard Disk Sentinel detects these issues so you can work toward rectifying them in short order. As a consequence, Hard Disk Sentinel's main objective is to verify, diagnose, and repair any problems your hard drive may have.

Unfortunately, Hard Disk Sentinel can be a little difficult to use for first-timers. There are a lot of options, but most of them don't work without paid registration. This limits the usability of the program. Since all of the advanced features are still shown on the trial version as well, it might confuse users who aren't as tech-savvy about PC optimization programs.

Hard Disk Sentinel is a good PC optimization program to get you started. If you want advanced features, however, look elsewhere.

Download Hard Disk Sentinel 3.60 in Softonic

Why this is the case I have no idea because large hidden files are one of the most annoying problems in Windows, taking up valuable disk space but serving no useful purpose. Free Disk Usage Analyzer is a very useful tool which helps you organize your files and manage disk space by locating the largest files on your disk. You can quickly find where are your largest files, such as videos, photos and archives, and move them elsewhere, such as to a backup drive.

Of course, if the files are no longer useful, you can just delete them. One such example could be video files that have been cached by sites such as YouTube or Google Video that you no longer need. Scanning may take a while depending on how large your hard drive is but results are displayed in real time as it collates them. Free Disk Usage Analyzer also allows you to view the files by type in a convenient pie chart format.

It would be useful if you could preview what each file contains before deleting it but as a simple search and destroy tool, Free Disk Usage Analyzer does the job.

Download Free Disk Usage Analyzer 1.0 in Softonic