HDAT2 vs smartmontools

HDAT2 is a drive-testing and diagnostic program for ATA, ATAPI, SATA, NVMe, SSD, and SCSI/USB devices. Its device-level tools test drives and can repair bad sectors on detected devices. File-system testing covers MBR/GPT, boot data, and directories on FAT12/16/32, exFAT, and NTFS. SMART functions are available for ATA/SATA, SCSI, and NVMe drives. Capacity controls include SET MAX and Device Configuration Overlay, with options to restore full capacity; supported SATA and NVMe devices can also be switched between 512e logical sectors and 4Kn. HDAT2 detects devices on AHCI and some RAID controllers, and USB devices through USB ASPI or BIOS when supported. The main program requires a real DOS system booted from USB, floppy disk, or CD/DVD. A Windows 32/64-bit demo is available, but it operates only at drive level, omits file-level functions, and aborts almost all commands while simulating conflicts. The freeware plan is free, for one or more machines, with redistribution without profit; it is provided as-is without warranty.

smartmontools is a free package containing smartctl and smartd for controlling and monitoring storage devices through SMART. It supports ATA/SATA, SCSI/SAS, and NVMe disks, as well as SCSI/SAS tape devices. smartctl can report SMART health status, show capabilities such as error logging and offline surface scanning, display vendor-specific attributes, start device self-tests, and read their logs. A failing health status can mean a device has failed or predicts failure within 24 hours. smartd periodically monitors SMART status, error and self-test logs, and attribute changes; it can schedule tests and report errors and attribute changes to syslog. It also supports warning emails and executable commands. The project says it should run on modern Linux, BSD variants, macOS, Solaris, Windows, Cygwin, OS/2, eComStation, and QNX systems, and can run from various Live CDs and DVDs. The package uses the GNU GPL Version 2 license and was originally derived from the Linux smartsuite package. Its capabilities focus on SMART health reporting, testing, and ongoing monitoring.