Sidebar Diagnostics vs smartmontools

Sidebar Diagnostics is a free Windows desktop sidebar for viewing hardware diagnostic information. It monitors CPU, RAM, GPU, network, and logical drives, and can graph those measurements. The sidebar can show a clock and supports alerts, hotkeys, and monitors with different DPI settings. The project describes extensive customization, with hardware data supplied by Libre Hardware Monitor. The README lists Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 as supported systems. Releases include an installer and a standalone ZIP; the standalone build does not update automatically. The application must be run as administrator. The GitHub repository identifies it as GPL-3.0 software and provides an issue template for reporting problems. The author says it will always be free on GitHub and invites donations. The Free plan costs nothing. Remote monitoring is not supported.

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.