HD Tune - scan your hard drive. HDD diagnostics in-house with HD Tune

) you can usually see some parameters, for example, disk size and read and write speeds. Some manufacturers may attribute the speed to higher than it actually is. There are special testing programs to check the real read and write values ​​of the drive.

In the last article, I am checking the speed of disks and flash drives. If you have already used this program and you have any doubts, then I present to your attention another utility - HD Tune.

Checking the speed of your hard drive with HD Tune

The HD Tune utility is quite old and hasn't received any updates lately, nevertheless, it has not lost its effectiveness.

The program can not only test the speed of the hard drive, but it has such functions as checking the drive for errors, checking temperature readings, processor load, and other information about the drives themselves.

There are two types of version - regular and PRO. The second one, of course, is paid, but it contains a couple of other functions that will not be useful to us. For the test, the free version is suitable for us, then we will download it: http://www.hdtune.com/download.html.

I will not describe the installation of the program, since everything is very simple there. I'll get right down to business, launch the program and tell you how to use it.

After launching HD Tune, we see a window with an interface in English and a large black box, where the graph is most likely shown.

At the very beginning of the window, we see a drop-down list in which we can select the disk we are testing. The temperature icon is shown to the right of this menu. Below there are tabs that are important when running tests.

Tab Benchmark conducts a hard disk read and write speed test. On the right you can see the items that are test results and this is what they mean:

• Transfer rate- Measuring the speed of the drive;
  • Minimum- minimum speed;
  • Maximum- maximum speed;
  • Average- average speed;
• Access Time- data access time;
• Burst rate- peak interface speed;

To start testing, you need to click on the button on the right "Start"... During testing, try not to use a computer and disable most running applications, including antiviruses, torrents, and so on.

Next tab Info shows information about the disk itself, for example, there is a name, firmware version, serial number, interface used. Knowledgeable people will find a use for this.

Let's move on to the next one. Tab - Health... This is where useful information about the state of the disk is stored. If all the items are marked with the OK status, then there is nothing to worry about, and if not, then you should be on your guard.

Good information is provided by the tab Error Scan which shows disk error data. This tool is not so powerful, but it will work for a quick assessment of the situation. If the sectors are highlighted in green, then there are no errors, if they are red, then they are damaged.

Output

Why are such programs useful? If you have been sold defective products with extremely high read and speed values, but in fact the disk is slow, then you should figure it out. Other functions of the program will help you assess the condition of the disk and take action. For example, if it overheats, then purchase additional cooling, if there is some physical damage, then fix it. Through testing, you can understand that the disk will soon come to an end, so you can transfer important information to another drive in advance.

What to do if bad sectors are found on the hard disk drive (HDD)

Today I want to tell you about the program
If programs such as Cristal Diskinfo are used to regularly check the hard disk, and instantly show the temperature of the hard disk, how long it has worked, how many times it has been turned on and the number of bad sectors. That HD Tune Pro serves to determine which sector is faulty. For many service centers, the Cristal Diskinfo scores will not be an indication that the hard drive is actually in need of warranty repair, but not the HD Tune Pro report. This program is trusted by many service centers, for example, the F-center company. Let's take a closer look at the reason for contacting the warranty department. Suppose your computer begins to behave strangely, you will by itself decide that there are problems with the operating system, a failure in applications or a virus. But don't forget about hardware failures. To do this, as in previous articles, I would advise you to use a program to diagnose the hard drive and boot the operating system. Let's skip the diagnostic methods and focus on checking the hard drive. The Cristal Diskinfo utility has informed you about the presence of a bad sector.
Your actions should be as follows:
1. Check the hard drive for bad sectors with Victoria or HD Tune Pro.
2. In the error scan section, uncheck the quick scan checkbox and wait for the hard disk check, it took me about 5 hours for 2 terabytes.
3. We are looking for a warranty card; stores give a guarantee of about three years for hard drives.
4. We save all the data, since the disk will be taken away for 2 weeks and all data from it will be deleted, and it does not matter what they decide in the service center, the data will be deleted for sure.
5. We print a screenshot of the error, in a good store they may not check the disk itself, but replace it according to the printouts provided, since this process is laborious.

Recommends to constantly check your hard drive, it is easier to replace it while it is working with a new one than to restore an already killed hard drive. Since you will need a donor to restore the disc, exactly the same disc, and also your disc will be removed from the warranty. As a result, you will lose your warranty, pay for a similar recovery disc, a 300% premium on the disc for data recovery, and buy a new disc. As a result, you can save up to 6 disks in advance.

Is your computer running slowly? Looking to upgrade your PC build with more RAM or a more powerful processor? Of course, these hardware components play a significant role in the overall performance of your computer. But a computer even with the most powerful processor may not live up to expectations if the assembly contains a hard drive with a slow read and write speed.

Or you may not even have to upgrade anything. In some cases, the computer may be slow or unstable due to the increased temperature of the hard disk due to poor ventilation of the case. And the problem can be solved by simply cleaning the system unit and moving it to a ventilated place.

How to determine if the hard drive is the culprit for slow or unstable computer? This requires its diagnostics. There are many different software for diagnosing hard drives, but, unfortunately, many worthwhile options can be downloaded on the Internet only with an English-language interface.

HD Tune Pro - about the features of the program

HD Tune is one of the few programs for diagnosing hard drives with the presence of the Russian language, an intuitive interface and organization. The program is designed for ordinary users, not just system specialists.

The professional version of the program - HD Tune Pro - offers more advanced functionality compared to the regular version.

This functionality includes:

- checking the health of the hard drive using S.M.A.R.T technology,

- determination of its temperature,

- testing the speed of reading and writing data,

- search for operational errors and bad sectors,

- a means of viewing the download and state of the hard disk,

- determining the space occupied by folders on disk partitions,

- the procedure for erasing all files deleted from the hard disk without the possibility of their recovery in the future,

- and much more.

HD Tune Pro works with both classic hard drives - HDDs, and new format hard drives - SSD-drives.

In the upper left corner of the HD Tune Pro window, you will see the name of your hard drive, if there is one. In the drop-down list, you can select another hard drive if you have several of them, as well as an SSD drive or even a connected USB flash drive.

Diagnostics will be carried out regarding the selected device.

In the corner of the program window on the right are its settings and several useful buttons for the convenience of diagnostics - copying information to the clipboard, a screenshot with storing the snapshot in the clipboard and saving the screenshot to a file.

You might find these buttons useful if, for example, you are consulting with someone on the Internet or asking for advice on a forum.

Let's take a look at some of the features of HD Tune Pro below. How and for what can you use the capabilities of this program?

Hard disk temperature

The hard drive temperature will be displayed in the upper center of the HD Tune Pro window.

30-45 ° is the norm for a working hard drive. 50 ° is an elevated, yet still acceptable temperature. It's worth worrying if your hard drive temperature is 60 ° C or more. To avoid overheating, it is urgent to take measures to clean the inside of the system unit. It is advisable to back up important data.

70 ° and above is a sentence for a hard drive. If it still works, copy the data to the cloud storage and urgently take the computer to the service center. Typically, at this temperature, the drive will fail shortly.

Checking the speed of reading and writing data

The test of the speed of reading and writing data will definitely come in handy if you decide to change your hard disk to a more efficient model. This way you can compare the current performance of your hard drive with the performance of more recent or better models on the market. Also, it will not be superfluous to carry out this test immediately after buying and installing a new HDD or SSD - did the manufacturer deceive by indicating somewhat overestimated indicators in the technical characteristics than they really are.

When you start HD Tune Pro, the Testing tab is displayed. Here you need to select what exactly will be checked - reading or writing, and start the process with the corresponding button.

The program will determine the maximum, minimum and average speed of reading or writing data from your hard disk. Since hard drive manufacturers tend to list maximum ratings in HDD and SSD specifications, you should roughly rely on peak speed when evaluating your hard drive.

But you should pay special attention to the access time indicator. It is almost the most basic parameter that determines the performance of a hard drive. Its normal range is from 2.5 to 16 ms, and the lower this figure, the faster the hard drive is.

Find errors and bad sectors

"Search for errors" - in this tab of the program, you can, accordingly, search for errors in the hard disk, as well as test it for the presence of bad sectors. For an express check of the hard disk, use the "Quick scan" option. But such a quick check will not tell you about possible physical damage to the hard drive. You can leave the in-depth scan, for example, overnight, so that the results of the program will be ready by the morning when you wake up.

HD Tune Pro will mark damaged sectors with red squares. The hard drive will look dotted with green squares without any problems.

Recovery of damaged HDD sectors is the level of experienced specialists. It is better not to do it yourself at home, but to take the computer to a service center. Again, if you have problems with the HDD, take care of backing up your valuable data.

Also, detailed information about the health of the hard disk can be seen in the HD Tune Pro - "Health" tab.

Determining the space occupied by folders on disk partitions

Neither Windows Explorer, nor many third-party file managers, no matter how extensive functionality they offer, can display a picture of the use of hard disk space in a complex manner and separately by folders. Such functionality can be offered as part of system cleaners and optimizers, as well as in separate implementations of utilities specifically for working with a hard disk. HD Tune Pro has a tab called "Calculate Folders" to determine the space occupied by folders on disk partitions. Obviously, we are dealing with a mechanical translation of the program into Russian.

Press the "Scan" button and in a minute or two you will see the organization of folders in the partitions of your hard disk in the form of a directory tree with the size of the space occupied by the folders. The subfolders in the tree will open and will also appear before you with information about their size. HD Tune Pro shows the sizes of both regular and hidden folders.

Determining the space occupied by folders is simply an indispensable function if Windows displays a message that it does not have enough free space on the system disk for normal operation. Analyze the folder with the settings of the "AppData" programs installed on the computer:

C: \ Users \ Account Name \ AppData \ Local

As a rule, rather weighty folders with settings of already deleted or practically unused programs can be stored here. Track the volumes of the Temp folders with temporary files: one of them is located here, in the AppData folder, the other - in the Windows system directory (C: \ Windows \ Temp). If there is no important data in the Temp folders, feel free to empty those folders.

But to delete data, you still have to resort to using Windows Explorer or a third-party file manager. This feature in HD Tune Pro is limited to reference only.

Also, the function of determining the space occupied by folders can be used to carry out a general cleaning among your user files.

Erase all deleted data from the hard drive

When programmatically deleting data from a computer and emptying the Windows recycle bin, files are still not physically erased from the magnetic platters of the HDD. Many programs for recovering deleted data work according to this principle, which can reanimate files until they are overwritten with new ones. The function of erasing all data deleted from the hard disk is rarely found in file managers, cleaners and system optimizers, as a rule, it is included in more serious programs for formatting, creating hard disk partitions and resizing them. Therefore, if you need to very quickly get rid of compromising information before checking "serious" government agencies, in addition to diagnosing a hard drive, such a functional appendage as a complete erasure of data will not be superfluous.

You can permanently delete all data from the hard drive in the HD Tune Pro program tab - "Erase".

Summing up ...

The above and other features of the HD Tune Pro program, of course, raise it to the rank of "Must Have". This program should be present on the computer of any advanced user, any enthusiast who is not indifferent to what happens to his computer assistant on the other side of the colorful interface of the operating system - in terms of boring numbers, indicators and technical terms. Boring, nevertheless, so important for a full-fledged and productive work with technology.

The most common problem is the physical destruction of sectors HDD ... There can be many reasons for this, ranging from a flaw in this model of a hard disk, to improper operation of the device, or simply destruction due to severe wear and tear. One of the reasons for the failure of a hard drive is associated with its fall from a small height when it is turned on. The heads hit the surface of the magnetic plates and tear out scratches in them. The resulting magnetic dust, after a while, destroys the head.

To monitor the health of your hard drive, I recommend an excellent programHard Disk Sentinel.With its help, you can instantly get all the information about the state of your hard disk (the accuracy of the readings of this program is very high, diagnostic errors are very rare).

In this example, we see that the state of one of the hard drives is unsatisfactory, here experience would be useful to you, but I will try to explain. If your computer starts to "dull" or "freeze" more and more often, and the speed of work is constantly dropping and this program has indicated you a possible option, then you need to do the following:

If the "bad" hard drive is not a system one (Windows is installed on a different hard drive), then we simply turn it off through the device manager or physically remove the cable from it, naturally when the PC is disconnected from the power supply. If after this manipulation the computer began to work well and quickly, freezes and freezes disappeared, then we go to the store, buy a new hard drive.

If the "bad" hard drive is a system one, it means that if the PC hangs slightly, you can observe the conditional state of the hard drive through this program, and if the indicator of "bad sectors" is constantly growing, then we urgently change the HDD to a new one, while the data transfer is still you can do it yourself... If you rely on "Maybe it will blow", then, as a rule, after a short period of time, or the number of bad sectors grows so that the hard drive is constantly hanging, and you already have to get the data yourself you can't do it yourself! The more you try to get the data yourself, the more expensive data retrieval awaits you. At the initial stages, this problem can cost from 40-50 Belarusian rubles to 80 rubles for the specialists of NETFLOW. If the hard drive is severely damaged, then such work will cost from 150 Belarusian rubles to 350 Belarusian rubles.

There is also an option that the program will indicate the SMART BAD parameter - this is not a comforting diagnosis, in which it is imperative to urgently replace the HDD. Also, with this problem, a Windows window may pop up:

Let's consider the option of a more complete and accurate diagnosis of the hard drive, and also find out which read and write speed results are normal and which are not.

For more accurate diagnostics, we use the HD Tune or Hard Disk Sentinel or Victoria program (who likes what better). These programs have the function of testing the speed of the hard disk with the ability to build a graph.

Here's how a working hard drive should work, new or in perfect condition:

The blue line marks the linear read speed for a disk with HDD magnetic platters. Yellow dots diagram for SSD.

As you can see from the graph, the disk reading speed decreases from the beginning to the end of the disk. I repeat once again - all serviceable drives have approximately the same graphs.

Below we will consider a variant of the schedules of hard drives to be replaced:

Linear Read Speed ​​for Failed HDD and SSD

NETFLOW will always help you to replace your hard drive or recover data as soon as possible. By contacting us, you entrust your data to good specialists who do their job efficiently and as quickly as possible.

Updated: 13.02.2018 Published: 2016 or earlier

Description

HD Tune is a utility for working with hard disk drives. With its help, you can check the media for physical errors (bad sectors), permanently delete data, conduct a performance test, measure the temperature of the hard drive, and much more. List of all features and comparison of the Pro version with the Free version:

How to use

As mentioned above, the functionality of the program depends on its version. If you use the free one, the following functions are available: hard drive scan, performance test (read-only), view disk information and conduct health assessment (S.M.A.R.T.).

First, download the required version (paid - hd tune pro, free - hd tune), install and run the program.

1. Download and install

To download the paid professional version, click on the hdtunepro trial:

To download the free, functionally limited version, click on hdtune:

The installation has no special features - just run the downloaded file and click "Next" several times.

Only the English version is available on the official website. HD Tune in Russian is available on third-party resources.

2. Scan disk for errors

Tab Error Scan:

Push Start and wait for the end of the check. Its duration depends on the size of the hard disk. If the program finds bad sectors, it will mark them in red. Check the box for quick scanning Quick scan(a quick scan will not check the disk for physical damage).

3. Deleting data without the possibility of their recovery

Tab Erase:

If you want to delete the data without the possibility of their recovery, select the option "Gutmann" in the drop-down menu (according to the method of Peter Gutmann and Colin Plumb) - move the slider to 35 - click Start.

This procedure can take a very long time, but the data can no longer be restored;

4. Performance test

Benchmark tab. Select the type of check (Read - test the speed of reading the disk, Write - write). Click "Start". The test results will be displayed below.

The program has several more functions that you will not be difficult to figure out on your own.