Macrorit Disk Scanner vs MHDD

Macrorit Disk Scanner performs surface tests to find bad sectors on storage devices. It can scan a whole disk, a partition, free space or a selected area. Healthy sectors appear green and errors red, and results can be saved to a chosen location as a readable log. The Free Edition scans one disk on Windows. Pro + Edition costs $18.95, paid once for one computer and adds simultaneous multiple-disk scanning and a report when scanning finishes. Unlimited Edition costs $99.95, paid once, covers an unlimited company license, supports Windows Server and includes multiple-disk scanning. A portable edition can run from a USB drive to scan offline disks. Listed supported storage includes HDDs, SSDs, hardware RAID, USB and external drives, flash drives, memory cards and other devices. Requirements include Windows, an x86-compatible 500 MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and 100 MB disk space. Macrorit says it was founded at the end of 2012 and identifies itself as part of Bada Technology Co., Ltd.

MHDD is a freeware utility for low-level hard drive diagnostics and management. It supports IDE, Serial ATA and SCSI drives, and can access USB storage through USB-to-SCSI emulation drivers. Diagnostic tools scan drives, show SMART attributes, run tests and log scan results. Drive operations include low-level erasing, sector reads and writes, bad-sector remapping, and changing drive size with HPA. A simple scripting engine and batch-file support allow tests to run without an operator. The maker offers the software as a CD image, self-extracting floppy image or archive of executable files. The manual lists an Intel Pentium or higher, 4 megabytes of RAM, a keyboard, and DR-DOS or MS-DOS 6.22 or higher as requirements. It notes that some AHCI controllers may not be recognized, with IDE or Legacy mode suggested if needed. The manual warns that MHDD can damage a drive or cause data loss, particularly around erase or remap operations, and advises backing up first. It also says the tool is difficult for people without deep knowledge of disk drives. MHDD is listed at free.