Disk check 1, 2, 1, 2...is this on?

What I wanted = A program to scan my collection of disk drives and say things along the lines of 'Whoa pal, this disk is so old Noah used it for his laptop on the ark!'

What I got: An anime girl reading my disks and telling me the current price of petrol somewhere in the world. 

Look, I don't know what's going on here either!

Surely it can't be that hard to do a little background check on my disks here can it?

Look, I've been around the internet block a couple of times. I'm used to pretty looking installers, usually on games but occasionally on programs too. What I wasn't expecting was a disk checking program with female anime characters...and I have no idea why they're there or what exactly I'm looking at. Welcome to Crystal Disk Mark then!

Now that I've run the processes and put it through it's paces, I realize now it's more a benchmark program and not what I need to designate drives to either the project or the nearest recycling bin. But still, now you too can gaze upon the results and wonder why it needs anime girl in the mix. Or even what a Shizuku is. 
Is it a place?
Is is a motorcycle? 
Is it a type of Sushi?

(The answer it turns out is that Suisho Shizuku is the mascot. Right. And if you don't like the look of the one your new benchmark software comes with, no worries, just change the theme to another. And it turns out there's more than a handful to choose from..)

Anyway, I've run the tests with all three of the drives so let's have a look at what we can glean here, even though it looks more like the price of petrol under current Iran war prices than it does anything I can use here. 

DISK ONE - OPERATING SYSTEM DISK

Well that's certainly some numbers there. Are they good? Are they bad? Do I need to reach for a fire extinguisher or perhaps an axe? Will it last the rest of the week? Can I chuck in a couple of bucks and invest in Q8T1 whatever that is? And is the mascot looking slightly concerned here or does she look like this pretty much all the time? 
Obviously we have to compare these numbers to other numbers I suppose, so let's do that!

DISK TWO - TIS EMPTY

Hmm (presses tips of fingers together to look wise while squinting at the screen and trying to make sense of these digits.) Slower read, faster write. So does this mean disk two is better to install things on but never use? Since the mascot is still mute, I'm just going to go with that! Thanks Shiskabob edition!
But wait, we're not out of disks (or the woods) yet!

DISK THREE - A WASTELAND OF SPACE

Coming a distinct third in everything according to mute mascot, it looks like I've got the disk order pretty much spot on here in terms of putting your best foot forward. However I don't know if one day this year I'll wake up and find my foot completely burnt out here. Crystal Disk Mark doesn't help me with this. 

So I went over to Perplexity and it told me to go back directly to Crystal Disk and pick the correct one this time, you idiot.

TAKE TWO THEN - THIS TIME WITH CRYSTAL DISK INFO

This time around I didn't download a version with a 6 year old looking mascot, I just went for the no frills version where you can't get distracted by anime at all and can solely focus on the burning question - is this cake? No wait, WILL THIS WORK?

And not only did it give me the exact information I was looking for, it did it quicker than I could say 'Hey, don't I have to press a button here?' There is zero stuffing around here, just open up the program and there's everything you disk health checking little heart could desire.

DISK ONE - READY TO RUN BACK TO BACK MARATHONS

Oh did I mention that you can save the results as a jpeg? Super handy to save things back on the USB that take photos with the phone again. (I will figure out some upstairs/downstairs file transfer system soon enough because at the moment there's a fair bit of back and forth stair climbing.) Anyway, the OCZ SSD comes out as the king of the mountain here, having been awake and run for the less than a year so far. The digital doctor is quite impressed by this and given the OS disk a 100% pass mark so there goes any concern that I'll start this machine one day and it'll forget it's own name somehow. 

DISK TWO - A MARATHON AND A HALF

It's the one of the trio with the most space, it's also clocked up 320 full days of operation. However it's ticker is tickety boo according to Doc Digital so long may it continue to serve in this little project of mine!

DISK THREE - A MARATHON THEN A SHORT BREAK

Clocking up a year and a handful of days of operation so far, its health score still exceeds my year 12 average test scores by a wiiiiiiiidddde margin which is very pleasing to see. And even better, even though I have no idea what a Soft ECC correction rate is all about, I still can see what I was after here and that's a general 'she's apples mate!'

But what about my other random disk collection laying about? Are they usable or now just paperweights?

THE WESTERN DIGITAL HDD'S

What would Crystal Disk Info make of these non SSD relics of yesteryear?

Well actually..

Yes even with the 250GB version running the equivalent of almost three and a half years on now, it's still good. The 500GB version, still good. Obviously it doesn't tell me how good (I guess HDD's don't get a percentage like their sleeker non moving part SSD cousins?) But I was expecting average scores and found myself pleasantly surprised. Now if Garage Intelligence needs some more space for cat pictures, I can use either one of them!

BUT NOW FOR THE TRUE TEST HERE..

I've got a WD 500gb laptop drive from 2013 making it 13 years old at the time of writing. The Seagate 320GB laptop drive is even older, hailing from December 2011 and almost ready to learn how to drive a car in this country. 
I can't recall exact where they hailed from (possibly some ancient laptops someone gave me a long time ago?) but they've been in my parts collection for quite some time and now they have to stand in front of Judge Crystal Disk to see if they continue to hang around the workshop any longer. 

So I plugged them in and...it turns out I don't even need CDI to tell me how cooked they are, the onboard Windows 10 disk formatter tells the story:

There's nothing there Jim!

Sorry boys, it's bin time. 

So seven drives in all, five passed with flying colors and two failed to even get out of the bed when it came testing time. That's so much better than I would have predicted, winner!

Thanks Crystal Disk Info!