Windows Surface Scanner is a free, fast utility that scans your hard drive(s) for physical errors. It will examine each sector on your hard drive for read errors and reports them if found. It is purely diagnostic and will not fix or “mark” bad sectors or recover data.

DiskCryptor is a free, open source disk encryption software. It encrypts entire hard drive partitions, including the system partition as well as flash drives in real time without affecting performance. It can also create encrypted CDs/DVDs (through the use of disk image .ISO files). It offers excellent performance for mounted encrypted volumes and a good range of features and options.

Easeus Todo backup is a free program that can create backup images of your hard drives or partitions and restore them on demand, and can also copy (clone) a hard disk/partition into another. It can process active primary (boot) partition via a bootable CD/DVD that it will create for you on-demand. Advanced options include mounting of disk image files for easy browsing of their contents, compression, and password encryption.Supports most file systems as well as most hard drive types.

FreeFileSync is a free/open source folder and file synchronization program that features a beautiful, two pane user interface and a host of powerful options. It can do the following: compare files by their content or by file size and date, synchronize files and subfolders, process multiple pairs of folders at once, load/save folder comparison sessions, create batch jobs that can be run from the command line, and can can handle cloned files (i.e. symbolic links or junctures). It also offers UniCode and Network support. There is also a portable (no-install) version.

WinCDEmu is a free, open source program that can mount disk images (.ISO, .IMG, .CUE, .BIN and .RAW) into virtual CD or DVD drives. It works invisibly without a user interface, and simply allows the user to double click on an image file to mount a CD/DVD image into a virtual drive, and to right-click “eject” to unmount.

SpaceSniffer is a free program that displays the size of your files and folders in a visual “Treemap” representation. It allows you to browse your folder structure, drill in and out of represented elements, and filter the display by any combination of criteria (filenames, extensions, size, date). It also allows you to access your Windows context menu for on-the-spot file/folder manipulation.

Free Disk Usage Analyzer is a free hard drive analysis tool that reveals those files and folders on your drive(s) that are occupying the most disk space. It displays ranked lists of both your top space-hogging files and folders.

Easeus Partition Manager Home Edition is a free disk partitioning utility that offers a powerful range of functions such as resizing drive partitions, formatting partitions, copying partitions/drives, creating new partitions, deleting partitions, hiding partitions, changing drive letters, setting active partitions, and a handful other functions.

Desktop Media is a free program that can display shortcuts on the desktop to USB drives, CDs/DVDs and other media when you plug them in, and automatically removes these shortcuts when you unplug. It can also alternately create so-called “hard links” to your media instead of shortcuts.

EjectUSB is an open source program that is run from a USB device to close all programs running from the device and eject the drive for safe removal. It will also remove registry entries and recent document shortcuts that refer to the USB device.

Click&Clean is a free tool that works alongside CCleaner to provide 1-click hard drive and browser cleanup from within Internet Explorer, Firefox, or the desktop Quick Launch bar. It can perform an instant, complete uninterrupted cleanup with CCleaner without exiting the browser or dealing with prompts and dilags.

Pathsync is an open source drive or directory synchronization tool that can compare two paths and provides a number of options for copying files back and forth across the two. It offers a number of useful options such as filtering by user-defined filename mask or extension and user-defined buffer size for the copying operation.