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HDDScan – hard drive surface test and benchmark
Post on Google hard drive study covered important issue that first months are critical to determine hard drive health. Bad blocks is one of the most common sign of failure so scanning drive surface for those is good move both early and from time to time.
HDDScan is easy to use but quite powerful utility for this task.
What it does
App covers three main tasks for hard drive tests:
- checking SMART parameters (also see my guest post on SMART analysis with SpeedFan);
- several surface scans (careful there, Erase is destructive scan);
- performance graph.
In recent versions interface got quite confusing (eye-candy gone bad) so it may take some time to figure out. After launching surface test additional window is available with through output graph and surface map.
Strong features
- four types of surface scan;
- reports export and print;
- command line operation;
- thorough report on hard drive parameters and supported technologies;
- access to hard drive features, such as acoustic management.
Overall
HDDScan gets task done really well and works without installation. Interface borders terrible but for occasional use it is worth to endure that. :)
Home&download http://hddscan.com/
Awesome bonus article on hard drive teardown http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html
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The software certainly looks pretty (looks identical to WMP). Gonna give it a try. But to be honest the only software that I really trust is SpinRite. Its the grand dady of all HD tools and is still the best by far for diagnostics as well as repair.
For SMART I use CrystalDiskInfo (those guys have a separate tool called CrystalDiskMark for benchmark).
@Pallab
Spinrite is powerful stuff but no longer developed and relatively (especially relatively to free :) expensive. MHDD does similar stuff but is free, need to do a post on it as well.
As for HDDScan it is simple way to test surface right under Windows, a lot of folks need and ask for just that.
I’ve tried CrystalDiskInfo but constant minor updates, alphas, betas, whatever annoy me a little. :)
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