Check your drive's health in seconds
X Drive Health is a free, portable Windows tool that reads SMART data from SSDs and NVMe drives, runs a non-destructive read benchmark on any drive, and detects USB sticks that have entered hardware read-only failure mode - the silent way cheap flash drives die.
Everything you need to know about your drives
One tool for SSDs, HDDs and USB sticks - with the depth of a SMART monitor and the simplicity of a USB tester.
SMART reliability data
Reads wear level, temperature, power-on hours, read/write error counters and latency stats from any SATA SSD, NVMe drive or modern external SSD that reports SMART through Windows Storage.
Read benchmark
Reads 16 evenly-spaced samples across the full drive, reports min / average / max speed with an auto-verdict from "very slow / likely fake" to "NVMe-class speed". 100% read-only and safe.
Write probe
Rewrites sector 0 with its own contents - no data is changed. Detects drives that look writable but silently refuse writes (the classic end-of-life failure for old USB flash drives).
Detects hidden partitions
Shows every physical drive Windows can see at the storage-stack level - including drives that have Linux ext4, macOS APFS or BSD partitions that File Explorer cannot read. The drive isn't broken, just formatted for another OS.
Save plain-text report
Export drive info, SMART data, benchmark results and write-probe verdict to a single text file. Great for forum posts, manufacturer warranty claims, or simply keeping a record of when a drive started to age.
Safe eject for USB drives
One-click safe eject - locks every volume, dismounts the filesystem and tells Windows the drive can be physically removed. Same protocol the system tray uses. Disabled for non-USB drives so internal SSDs cannot be ejected by accident.
The interface - dark, graphical, color-coded
What you actually learn from it
Different drives expose different data. X Drive Health gives you a useful answer regardless of what your drive supports.
Full SMART picture
SSDs that report Windows Storage Reliability counters give the deepest insight. You see exactly how much life is left in the drive.
- Wear / lifetime used percentage
- Current and max recorded temperature
- Power-on hours, formatted as years / days
- Total read / write error counts
- Uncorrected errors - the smoking gun for failing media
- Read and write latency maxima
Without SMART - still useful
Most cheap USB sticks don't implement SMART. X Drive Health hides the SMART panel automatically and falls back to direct measurements that work on every drive.
- Real read speed across the entire capacity
- Speed variance - a sign of weak flash cells
- Write-probe detects hardware read-only failure
- Filesystem detection (FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, ext4...)
- Volume label, partition layout, drive letters
- Health classification from Windows storage stack
How to check a drive
From download to verdict in under a minute - the read benchmark on a typical USB stick takes about 20 seconds.
Download and run
Download the 10 MB executable. Run it - Windows will prompt for administrator rights, which are required to read raw drive data.
Pick a drive
The Select drive dropdown lists every physical drive on the system. Pick the USB stick, SSD or HDD you want to check.
Read drive info
Model, capacity, bus type, health status, serial, firmware and partition layout appear instantly. SMART counters show below if the drive supports them.
Run a test
Click "Run read benchmark" for a 16-sample speed test, or "Write probe" to confirm the drive accepts writes. Save a text report when you're done.
Why we built the write probe
Cheap USB flash drives don't die cleanly. When their
controller exhausts its spare flash blocks, instead of
refusing to work entirely, many sticks enter a "hardware
read-only" mode - they accept the open-for-write request
but silently fail every actual write with
ACCESS_DENIED.
The drive looks healthy. Windows says it's healthy. File Explorer shows it. You can read everything on it. But if you try to copy a file onto it, or burn a bootable ISO, every write fails with a confusing error and Windows blames "permissions".
The write probe rewrites sector 0 with its own contents - no data is changed - and reports whether the drive accepted the write. If it didn't, you immediately know the drive is dying, regardless of what Windows or any other tool tells you.
This single test will save you hours of "why doesn't this drive work" debugging. It is the test that no other free Windows drive utility runs.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers on SMART, USB testing and supported drives.
Is X Drive Health really free?
Yes - 100% free for personal and commercial use. No trial, no nag screens, no bundled software. Like every other tool on xcodecpack.com, it is funded by non-intrusive display ads on this site and nothing else.
Why does X Drive Health need administrator rights?
Windows requires administrator rights to open any physical drive handle for raw I/O - both read and write. There is no way around this at the OS level. X Drive Health requests UAC elevation on launch and does not escalate silently.
My USB stick doesn't show any SMART data. Is that bad?
No - it's normal. Cheap USB flash drives do not implement SMART or Storage Reliability counters through Windows. SATA SSDs, NVMe drives and modern external SSD enclosures usually do. The read benchmark and write probe work on every drive, SMART-supporting or not.
Can it detect counterfeit / fake-capacity USB drives?
Partially. Fake drives that claim to be 1 TB but only have 8 GB of real flash usually show extreme speed drops at the point where the real capacity ends - the read benchmark will surface that as a "Very slow" verdict on the affected samples. For full capacity verification, dedicated tools like H2testw or f3 are the gold standard.
How does this differ from CrystalDiskInfo?
CrystalDiskInfo is a SMART monitor and shows everything a drive's SMART firmware reports - very deep, very technical. X Drive Health is simpler: fewer numbers, color-coded badges, an auto-verdict, a write probe that catches hardware-locked USB sticks, and Linux / macOS partition detection that CrystalDiskInfo does not do.
Will running this damage my drive?
No. The read benchmark is 100% read-only. The write probe writes sector 0 back with its own contents - the same bytes that were already there - which is effectively a no-op for the drive. Neither test will shorten a drive's life in any measurable way.
It says my drive has unreadable partitions - is it broken?
Probably not. Windows can only read NTFS, FAT, exFAT and ReFS filesystems. If a drive holds Linux ext4, macOS APFS, FreeBSD UFS or similar, Windows cannot browse it - but the drive itself is fine. X Drive Health detects these via GPT partition-type GUIDs and clearly labels them so you don't panic.
Can it check internal SSDs and the Windows boot drive?
Yes - reading SMART and running the read benchmark on the Windows system drive is completely safe. The write probe is refused on the boot drive automatically, and the Eject button is disabled for internal drives so they cannot be unmounted by accident.
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