Spyware is unlawful. Except if a big company does it. Use of some kind of AV program is now a requirement for all home users. Corporate users may have some other means to protect the workstations. Good Spyware program stop real threats, but allow known companies to interrogate lour PC.
Anti Spyware and Anti Virus may be called different things. Yet some major AV packages include Anti Spyware.
In general, errors on a HDD does not increase with repeated reads. If anything, it drops.
That is hard to prove. The statistics get into very, very low error rates. Like on part in a trillion in in the case of hardware that is good. ECC, error correcting code. is part of many mass storage devices. When you do a restore on your computer, the HDD electronics will 'repair' flaws in the disk surface by remapping weak sectors. OK, not really a repair, but has the same result.
But if there was a 'hard' error, it will propagate. A 'hard' error is one that can not be corrected and was there from the start. Or was made by a huge disturbance. Lightning strike or nuclear blast. Or fire or flood.
Yes, HDD can fail. But failure of a power supply is more likely for a PC beyond its infancy. Power supplies decline with age faster taht the HDD. On average.
The program you named is a commercial product to help with updates.
http://ninite.com/I am not knowledgeable about its features.
Thee are some other tools with similar features. A few are free. The Malwrebytes program does its own update checking. So do many AV programs, like Avast.
Asking question is what makes this forum work. 'Seek and ye shall find.'