CrystalDiskInfo — The Complete Guide: Check Drive Health Before It Fails
CrystalDiskInfo reads S.M.A.R.T. data and shows each drive’s health, temperature, power-on hours and data written, NVMe included, with alerts. Open source.
Guides and Articles
balenaEtcher — The Complete Guide: Flash an OS Image to USB or SD Card in Three Steps
balenaEtcher writes an ISO or IMG file to a USB drive or SD card in three steps, verifies the write and hides system disks. Open source for Windows, Mac, Linux.
Ventoy — The Complete Guide: One USB Drive for All Your ISO Files
Ventoy installs a boot loader on a USB drive once; after that you just copy ISO files to it and pick one from a menu. Open source and free for any use at all.
Rufus — The Complete Guide: Make a Bootable USB Drive from an ISO in Minutes
Rufus turns a USB stick into a boot drive from an ISO — for a clean Windows or Linux install, diagnostic tools or BIOS updates. Tiny, portable, open source.
BleachBit — The Complete Guide: Clean Temp Files and Caches with No Ads and No Pro Edition
BleachBit deletes temp files, browser caches and system logs to free disk space, previews what will go and shreds sensitive files. Open source, no ads at all.
GNU Units — The Complete Guide: Unit Conversion and Unit-Aware Calculation from the Command Line
GNU Units converts quantities between systems and evaluates expressions while tracking units, with an extendable database of thousands of units. Free software.
ConvertAll — The Complete Guide: A Unit Converter That Understands Any Combination of Units
ConvertAll is an open-source unit converter where you type any unit combination, such as kN per square metre, with SI prefixes and engineering notation. Free.
MarkItDown — The Complete Guide: Turning Word, Excel and PDF into Clean Markdown Text
Microsoft’s MarkItDown converts Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML and EPUB into Markdown with headings and tables, from the command line or Python. Free, MIT.
FreeConvert — The Complete Guide: Online Conversion of Large Files, and What the Limits Are
FreeConvert converts images, documents, audio and video online, files up to 1 GB, no account. Free: 20 minutes a day, with ads; files deleted after 8 hours.
CloudConvert — The Complete Guide: Advanced Online Conversion and What the Free Plan Really Gives
CloudConvert converts documents, images, vectors, audio and video online in 200+ formats. Free plan: 10 credits a day, 1 GB files, deletion within 24 hours.
ConvertX — The Complete Guide: A Private Conversion Website Running on Your Own Server
ConvertX is an open-source file converter you install with Docker on an office server or NAS: a browser interface, over a thousand formats, files stay in-house.
VERT — The Complete Guide: Convert Files in the Browser Without Uploading Them
VERT converts images, audio and documents inside the browser, on your own computer, without uploads. Open source, no ads; only video goes to a server briefly.