Is your hard drive running the way it’s supposed to be running? Find out with HDDScan. This is a free hard drive diagnostics program. This program will test your hard drive for errors so you will know before your hard drive fails for good.

WHAT IS IT AND WHAT DOES IT DO

Main Functionality

HDDScan is a freeware program that allows you to check your hard drive for errors. It has the ability to check Flash USB, RAID arrays, and SSD drives. In other words, HDDScan can check basically any type of internal and external hard drive. The program will test for things like bad blocks and bad sectors, and S.M.A.R.T. attributes. In short, it runs a health test on your hard drive to help you predict a problem before your hard drive crashes on you for good.

The key way HDDScan helps predict hard drive failures is through S.M.A.R.T. warnings. S.M.A.R.T. — Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology — is an industry-standard hard drive test that looks at specific hard drive attributes and uses them to try to predict when, if, your hard drive will fail. S.M.A.R.T. isn’t perfect but it is the best we have got at this time to foresee hard drive failure before it occurs.

Pros

• Helps you prevent data loss by finding problems before your hard drive crashes
• Tests for bad blocks, bad sectors, and S.M.A.R.T. attributes
• Offers other features to see the hard drive’s temperature and its reading and writing benchmark
• Results of test are put into an easy-to-read graph
• Reports can be saved in MHT format, as well as be printed out
• It also offers skin and command line support
• Completely portable
• Easy-to-understand interface

Cons

• False security: No program can completely predict when your hard drive may crash. If HDDScan reports no errors, this does not mean that you have nothing to worry about. Backing up your data is always recommended. HDDScan provides reasonable assurance as to the health of your drive, not complete assurance.

Discussion

Ensuring that your hard drive is in good health is very important. A lot of times, problems will start popping up with a hard drive long before it crashes. HDDScan can help you identify these problems and back up your hard drive before it crashes. This can help you prevent losing data.

The program is able to read and analyze information from ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire/SCSI HDD. It can also report defect information on SCSI HDD. Knowing this kind of information can save you a lot of problems later on.

If you don’t understand the information you are looking at, no problem. The program gives you the ability to print the reports that you make. Now you can share this information with others who may be able to give you a better understanding of what it all means.

Another cool feature of HDDScan is the fact that it is also able to report the internal temperature of your hard drive and give you a benchmark for your drive’s reading and writing speed. This is helpful information that was just included in this program. Although the information may not help you determine when your hard drive may crap out on you, it is still important information to know.

If there is one problem I have with this program, it is the fact that it can give you a false sense of security. Let’s say the program says that there were no errors found on your hard drive. You’re thinking, “Great, I can back up my stuff later.” However, you need to remember that no program is 100 percent accurate all the time. Even without any errors, your hard drive may crap out tomorrow. This isn’t typical, as most hard drives give some kind of warning before dying. Either way, it is still very important to back up your information on a regular basis, regardless of what this program says.

CONCLUSION AND DOWNLOAD LINK

HDDScan is a great program to use, and I honestly believe that it is a good idea for everyone to keep up with the state of their hard drive. That being said, don’t let the program give you a false sense of security. Remember, you still need to back up your data on a regular basis. After all, just like all electronics, it could crap out on you at any moment.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 3.3

Supported OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7

Download size: 3.64MB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 1/46

Is it portable? Yes

HDDScan homepage