A Computer’s SMART caution is one worth your attention. When your storage drives are overlooked and overloaded with a huge amount of files, images, videos, etc. Then benchmarking HDD and SSD is a must, at least in a while because a damaged or slow drive can lead to serious complications. But, how can you check if your hard drive is perfectly functional? There are numerous software utilities developed to configure, evaluate and optimize the general health of a computer.
Among them, HD Tune is a gem. The first version of HD Tune Pro was released on 12 February 2008; later, its developers continuously update it with improved features. HD tune is a free, easy-to-use, and versatile hard drive diagnostic program designed for windows. It supports all storage devices, carries out a scan for errors, benchmarking, AAM setting, securely erasing, format, or view folder usage, and copy all the information to the clipboard.
Features
The software’s old-school interface includes four tabs. Let’s have a deep view of the most important aspects of HD Tune.
Benchmark read test
HD Tune’s free version adequately estimates all the internal and external storage drives performance through multiple tests. Such as, you can measure transfer rate, access time, burst rate as well as CPU usage while benchmark. Moreover, you can modify the speed of the benchmark test and the block size required to read the drive’s data.
This software improves the functionality of your system through the facility of file benchmarking together with file length customization. However, I have experienced HD Tune’s random access test which gave valid results and helped stimulate normal usage conditions while transferring data files of various sizes.
Manage Disk usage
In the second tab, you get an info page that is designed to have a view of the drive’s supported features such as serial number, model, total capacity, and other basic information. HD Tune gives you meaningful insight into your HDD or SSD and analyzes its usage in total and in the folders.
Secure data erasing
Students often suffer from an issue of low-disk space. But, it helps me to find and filter out unnecessary large directories by simply switching to the folder usage tab and afterward running a scan. Thus, I can easily manage disk space to store more data. However, this program only lets you copy information to the clipboard as a screenshot and does not let you save it directly to a file. Furthermore, it is also a treat for privacy-minded users because they can overwrite on their drive’s free space and thus prevent the recovery of any deleted files.
SMART Attributes
The third tab of this program enables you to keep a close eye on the health parameter of your storage devices. Good health of hard drives significantly speeds up your computers and provides you with faster boot times and superior system responsiveness. SMART short for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, analyzes numerous mechanical attributes. Through regular checks, you will be of any predictive hard drive failure, for example, heat tolerance and upcoming issues. Lastly, you have a choice of blocks to which you want to be scan for errors to locate damaged sectors.
Temperature detection
The AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) feature of HD Tune facilitates noise reduction often made by hard drives which can be a cumbersome problem for people who like to have silent PCs. In addition, this intelligent software also helps in the temperature detection of your drive if it is overheating. You can also select a particular number to the critical temperature from the options menu enables you to understand the drive’s condition quickly. It shows on top of the screen in the Windows taskbar.
Compatibility
HD tune is versatile compatibility, and; it works well with both internal storage drives connected directly to the computer’s motherboard and external HDD, SSD, or memory card. For example, a Flash drive can be connected to a PC only by USB, eSATA, or wirelessly from outside. Furthermore, it is purely a Windows-based hard drive testing program that can be run officially on Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and 2000. Besides this, you will not find any trouble in using this software on Windows 8 & 10 as well. This version is free for personal use. Therefore, for commercial purposes, you can purchase it for $35.
Alternatives to HD tune
Like HD tune, if you are looking for other great utilities for SSD or HDD that can also be run on Linux and macOS, then you can try some of the below-listed alternatives.
GSmart Control
GSmart Control enables you to run multiple hard drive tests to assess the health statistics of your drive. The software provides authentic and detailed results with a graphical interface that can also be saved. In deep insight of the drive’s SMART parameters, you can have factual detail on multi-zone error rate, calibration retry count and power cycle count, etc.
Hard disk sentinel
This health and temperature testing software is also multi-OS that ensures and warns you about any unexpected behavior of HDD, SSD, hybrid drives (SSHD), NAS drives, and disks RAID arrays in your system. Besides this, it also accompanied you with automatic backup action. It helps to maximize your computer’s performance, stability, and integrity by repairing hard disks after monitoring and diagnosing problems. Moreover, the program also enables you to evaluate disk transfer speed for benchmarking.
HDDScan
HHDScan is portable software that you can use without the need to be installed. Unlike HD Tune, you can save SMART reports to a file such as TXT File or an MHT. It has command-line support and can scan errors or run tests on numerous storage devices like PATA, SATA, USB, SSD, SCSI, and FireWire. The only drawback users will find the lack of documentation or description related to different performance indicator tests.
Conclusion
Overall, HD Tune is a powerful, feature-packed, and easy-to-use hard drive management utility that comes with extensive documentation, customizable features, and an intuitive GUI. This program not only monitors drive’s health but also benchmarks your devices and detects issues for underperformance. The only thing that I found annoying while using it is that it would not allow you to export SMART details to a file. Instead of this, you can copy information to the clipboard as screen shoot image. The plus feature of HD Tune like, manage disk usage, secure erasing and file benchmark, lets you ignore any of the other issues.