GSmartControl vs Western Digital Kitfox
GSmartControl
gsmartcontrol.shaduri.devWestern Digital Kitfox
support-en.wd.comSide by side
| Figure | GSmartControl | Western Digital Kitfox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Disk Health Monitoring Software | 8.4 (#4) | 6.7 (#28) |
| Drive limitation | SCSI and SAS drives are not supported, though the application may display some information about them. | Other internal and external drives may appear in Kitfox but are not supported. |
| Purpose | GSmartControl is a graphical interface for smartctl that lets users inspect SMART data and run drive tests. | Western Digital Kitfox assists with WD drive testing, temperature monitoring, and health checks. |
| Support | Users are directed to report bugs through the GitHub issue tracker after consulting the troubleshooting page. | The page says Western Digital does not provide support for third-party software or hardware. |
Plans
In their own words
GSmartControl
GSmartControl is a graphical interface for smartctl, used to inspect drive SMART data and run tests. It displays drive identity, capabilities, attributes and device statistics, and automatically highlights anomalies. Users can enable or disable SMART and adjust global or per-drive smartctl options. Saved smartctl output can be opened as a read-only virtual device. The software supports ATA drives, including SATA and PATA, and NVMe drives, plus some devices behind USB bridges and selected RAID controllers. SCSI and SAS drives are not supported, though some information about them may appear. GSmartControl is free software under the GNU General Public License version 3. Downloads include Linux packages, Windows installers and portable archives, FreeBSD ports, macOS packages and source code. smartmontools is a runtime requirement, but official Windows packages include the required software. Useful operations require root or Administrator privileges because operating systems restrict direct hardware access. Supported systems listed include Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, macOS and Solaris; QNX support is described as untested.
Western Digital Kitfox
Western Digital Kitfox has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.