At first glance DriveInfo looks like another very ordinary system monitoring gadget, this time listing every drive on your system, with its free and total space. Not exactly impressive, especially as it didn’t even get all these figures right for us (a 3TB network drive was reported as -1346.80GB).

It seems the developer has realised that users need more from their gadgets, though, and in response he’s equipped DriveInfo with a host of additional features and tools.

At its simplest, you can just click each drive pane to open that folder in Explorer. Hovering your mouse cursor over DriveInfo displays more shortcuts for Task Manager, the Lock Screen and Run box. You also get configurable icons to launch the program or folder of your choice.

A host of tiny icons give speedy access to DriveInfo’s many tools and shortcuts

An “IP” button displays the current IP address for each of your network adapters, an “auto shutdown” option closes your PC at the time you specify, and there’s a simple screen magnifier and basic file search tool.

Right-clicking another icon launches a basic screen capture tool. Select a custom rectangular area of the screen, and it saves your results as a JPG, PNG, TIF or BMP file.

A “Startup Manager” lists your Windows startup programs, and provides options to disable or delete any you don’t need.

There’s even a simple program launcher. Drag and drop your favourite files, folders or shortcuts onto a tiny toolbar and they’re available at a click.

Many of these functions are limited, or easily available with a standard Windows hotkey (Win+R to launch the Run box, for example). The program isn’t always reliable, either, crashing twice during our relatively brief tests.

DriveInfo does provide much more than hard drive information, though, and if you like this kind of tool then it’s certainly worth exploring.