Inspect disk activity in real-time with DiskPulse

Sometimes you may want to know what's going on with your disk at a given moment. Maybe you're just curious that way, or maybe you're trying to troubleshoot a problem or detect whether or not there's a keylogger on your PC.

For those times, DiskPulse can come in very handy. There are three versions of the software: Free, Pro and Ultimate. Naturally, I tested the free one, and it's surprisingly solid.

By default, you get a flood of file changes from all over the system when you start monitoring. It's very easy to narrow down on exactly what you're interested in, though. You can set it to log only certain events (file creation but not modification, for example) or monitor only specific folders and not the whole disk.

One of the free edition's few downsides is the way it pushes you to buy the paid version. Some parts of the interface are disabled, but they're not grayed out. Instead, they seem operational until you click them, and then you're presented with a dialog that lets you know that this part of the program would only become available if you buy the full version (which really is inexpensive at US $25).

I have no problem with the developers trying to convert me over to the paid version; they have to make a living somehow. However, they might want to consider a more tactful way of doing it.

This minor niggle aside, DiskPulse is a powerful and well-built piece of software, which I hope I will never have to use -- at least not for security purposes.

Tags: activity, developer, disk, monitor, system tools, SystemTools