Macrorit Disk Scanner checks your hard drives for errors and issues
The Windows operating system ships with a native disk scanner that you can use to scan a hard drive partition for errors and issues. You can run it by right-clicking a partition in Windows Explorer, selecting Properties, switching to the Tools tab and clicking on the check now button there.
The program can be configured to "try" and fix file system errors, an option that is selected by default, and to scan for and attempt to recovery bad sectors on the drive as well.
The first question that may come up is why you would want to use a third party tool if the Windows operating system ships with its own program for that.
There are quite a few answers for that. For one, a third party tool may provide you with better options or better performance.
Macrorit Disk Scanner review
Macrorit Disk Scanner is a free third party hard drive scanner for Windows. It is dead easy to use and ships with a couple of advantages over Check Disk.
For one, it is possible to select any hard drive or partition connected to the PC from its interface. It can scan the whole disk or partition, or only a select part of it. The latter option provides you with the means to speed up the scan by limiting the scan area on the disk.
Once you start a scan you may notice that it runs faster than the Check Disk scan. It may not be as obvious, especially not if you have not run Check Disk for a while though.
The program runs a scan on the disk highlighting healthy sectors in green and ones with errors in red. Statistics displayed at the top highlight the overall scan speed per minute, the number of errors that have been found, and other information about the selected disk.
The program saves the scan report in a log file on the system, so that you can access it at any time.
While it scans the device for errors, it does not offer to repair them which limits its use somewhat. It may still be useful thanks to its faster scanning speed. One option that you have is to use the program to scan the disk for errors. If you do not find any, you are done. If you find errors, you may want to run Check Disk to see if they can be repaired.
The only other option that the program makes available is to shut down the system after the scan.
Verdict
If you are looking for a fast disk scanner then this program may fit the bill for you. It is free, compatible with all recent versions of Microsoft Windows - both client and server - and supports major storage device types such as IDE and SATA HDD and SSD, SCSI, FireWire, hardware RAID, flash cards and a lot more.
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Interesting. Personally I use the paid version of Hard Disk Sentinel.
I notice there are a lot of macrorit’s giveaways those days but I wonder me if I can trust macrorit because Softpedia seems to boycott them and in the same time macrorit claims that a Softpedia’s Editor Review rates its Disk Partition Expert tool as Excellent !
They even give a phrase of the review : http://macrorit.com/support.html
Martin, what’s the point ?
Based on the poor English on Macrorit’s website, I did some searching, and sure enough, it’s a Chinese company. Call me paranoid, but that’s enough reason for me to not use it on my system.
What makes you think that Softpedia boycotts them?
Perhaps the word boycott is too strong but I am not able to find a single Softpedia’s page about a macrorit product : this is not so common.
And I am not able to find the Review about Disk Partition Expert tool (I type softpedia and macrorit, in Google for instance).
It looks like they lie about this review that would not exist, no ?
Normally you click on the Softpedia’s photo and it leads you to the review. Do you have a link ?
Maybe it was listed there and has been removed? Could be a harmless explanation, like Macrorit asking Softpedia to remove the download.
Guess I’ll never know if it’s good or not, if this is the only way to download it:
“About the Download.com Installer
The Download.com Installer is a tiny ad-supported stub installer or “download manager” that helps securely deliver your downloads from Download.com’s servers. Our testing has shown that as many as half of all people who initiate a download fail to complete the download and install their software. The Download.com Installer improves the process by walking you through the steps of your download and enabling you to easily find and execute your software’s installer. For more information, read the FAQ.”
You don’t have to download from Download.com, there is a “local download” available too.
Hi,
Would be interesting to know if Macrorit can make you lose data like Check Disk can do in some cases.
For instance, we know Check disk works with 5 phases and will typically in phase 4 and 5 lock down some bad sectors if they are found to be damaged or no reparable. If data were inside, then they are gone.
Typically if some file are corrupted or can’t be accessed and you want to give a shot a getting them back,with the idea of repairing, using a soft like Check Disk and probably Macrorit (my guess is yes), you will lose them for good.
I fully agree with ilev, there are many apps that should only be offered as portable because it doesn’t make any sense to install an app that you’ll want to run only once or twice on any given machine.
Fortunately, there are several ways to make an app portable: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_application_creators.
Do not forget that it might be against the license terms of a program to fiddle with its installation. And keep in mind that redistributing some apps in portable form could be infringing copyrights and thus illegal. Blah blah blah you know this stuff… In order to be safe you either have to respect the law, or to make sure they won’t get you…
Any reason why applications, such as this, require installation vs portability ? Do these app developers do it in order to install some elements… hidden from users ?
I’ve found a portable version,
Open this link: http://macrorit.com/disk-surface-test/disk-surface-test.html
and choose “Local Download Portable Version”.
Good question. Do not know an answer to that either, other than to use the installer to control how the software is deployed on the system and to make it easier for users to access it by adding shortcuts to start and other locations.
I agree 100% that on-demand tools such as this SHOULD be made portable. There are a number of scenarios where portable is not always the best option – for example; where software requires “sharing” a native DLL or some other system file. Where updates are integral. Or where file associations might be concerned.
I can’t see that being the case with this software though. Being installable and not portable makes it a complete non-starter for me… shame.