Novawave Inc has released Novabench 4.0, a major new update for its Windows and Mac benchmarking tool. Version 4.0 unveils new and updated benchmarks, plus an interface redesign.
The tool opens with updated CPU tests to …

PatchCleaner is a free tool which can detect and safely remove junk files from the \Windows\Installer folder, potentially freeing up gigabytes of hard drive space.
The folder contains Windows Installer-based setup programs and patch files, and …

Run a Windows program which writes to disk and the changes won’t necessarily be saved immediately. The OS holds them in its cache for a short while, then writes them all at once in an …

CCSIO Benchmark is an intelligent drive speed checker from Swiss-based storage expert Pipemetrics.
The tiny portable program (210KB download) uses multiple combinations of options to automatically find the fastest possible read and write speeds for any …

Veteran drive monitor Hard Disk Sentinel has just been updated to version 5.0, the first major release in more than a year.
The Professional build gets a new “Repair disk drive” method which scans for weak …

Free-for-personal-use partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard 10 has shipped with extended GPT and exFAT support.
The new build adds handy migration features, including the ability to convert system disks from MBR to GPT, or copy an …

Eassos PartitionGuru Free is an easy-to-use hard drive manager which can create, resize, split, extend, clone or recover partitions.
The latest edition can also format multiple USB keys simultaneously and automatically, without any user intervention at …

EaseUS has shipped EaseUS Partition Master 11, adding hard drive clean and speedup tools to the regular partition-managing mix.
Both the Free and Professional editions gain a “Cleanup and Optimization” module, which could free up some …

Bvckup 2 developer Pipemetrics has released the first beta of Diskovery, a free system information tool which reveals all about your PC’s storage devices.
It’s a familiar idea, but Diskovery stands out for its thoroughness, using …

Benchmarking your PC’s hard drives is easy, at least in theory. Download some freeware, point it at your hardware, and you’ll have some vaguely performance-related figures within a very few seconds.
That’s fine for getting a …

Modern hard drives are generally very reliable, and may survive the entire lifetime of your PC without any problems at all. There are no guarantees, though, so it’s wise to have one or two diagnostic …