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Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko —  — Hardware, Software — benchmark, drive, test

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

hddscan_interface

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.

hddscan_results

hddscan_results

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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8 Comments

  • Pallab #

    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).

  • Rarst #

    @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. :)

  • Scandisk Visual E Benchmark De HD para Windows | Blog KTecNet #

    [...] Fonte .: rarst.net  – hard drive surface test and benchmark [...]

  • HDDScan: data rescue assistance #

    We have released a new version of HDDScan - v.3.3. This version includes Windows 7 and Vista support and works with SSD! Thank you for great article and feel free to visit HDDScan.com to get a new version :) All the best, Dmitri (project admin)

  • HDDScan: data rescue assistance #

    Just forgot to mention: since you liked the article about HDD "anatomy", you may be interested in our new article about simple data recovery: http://hddscan.com/doc/data-recovery-for-dummies.html (but it's less technical and can be useful for newbies trying to rescue their lost files)

  • Rarst #

    @HDDScan Thanks for heads up, bookmarked new version to check out and Appnewsed it.

  • bob blankenship #

    Can't get HDDScan to run on Win7 x64

  • bob blankenship #

    compatibility mode solved problem