Updated: 02/13/2018 Published: 2016 or earlier
Description
HD Tune is a utility for working with a hard drive. With its help, you can check the media for physical errors (bad sectors), permanently delete data, conduct a performance test, measure the temperature hard drive and much more. List of all features and comparison of the Pro version with the Free version:
| Opportunity | HD Tune Pro | HD Tune Free |
|---|---|---|
| Performance test (reading) | + | + |
| Performance test (recording) | + | - |
| Media information | + | + |
| S.M.A.R.T. | + | + |
| Scan for errors | + | + |
| Information about the space occupied by folders | + | - |
| Permanent deletion of data | + | - |
| Read and write performance test of files of different sizes | + | - |
| Advanced testing | + | - |
| Permanent drive monitoring | + | - |
| Acoustic Noise Management (AAM) | + | - |
| External drives | + | - |
| Temperature statistics | + | - |
How to use
As stated above, functionality programs depend on its version. If you use the free one, the following functions are available: scanning the hard drive, performance test (read-only), viewing disk information and performing a health assessment (S.M.A.R.T.).
To get started, download the required version (paid - hd tune pro, free - hd tune), install and run the program.
1. Download and installation
To download the paid professional version, click on hdtunepro trial:
To download a free, functionally limited version, click on hdtune:
The installation does not have any 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 the disk for errors
Tab Error Scan:
Click Start and wait for the verification to complete. Its duration depends on the size of the hard drive. If the program finds bad sectors, it will mark them in red. To quickly scan, check the box Quick scan(a quick scan will not check the drive for physical damage).
3. Deleting data without the possibility of recovery
Tab Erase:
If you need to delete data without the possibility of recovery, select the “Gutmann” option from the drop-down menu (according to the method of Peter Gutmann and Colin Plumb) - move the slider to mark 35 - click Start.
This procedure may take a very long time, but the data can no longer be recovered;
4. Performance test
Benchmark tab. Select the test type (Read - disk read speed test, Write - write speed). Click “Start”. The test results will be displayed below.
The program has several more functions that will not be difficult for you to figure out on your own.
The HD Tune Pro program for Windows is created for those users who want to qualitatively and thoroughly test the performance of drives, both hard and portable, and also find out their maximum performance. You can scan disks with SCSI, SATA or IDE interfaces, as well as various memory cards and flash drives. To begin with, HD Tune Pro takes measurements by “driving” the specified disk, and then provides a report on many parameters, using which you will not only learn a lot of interesting things, but also see various disk errors that interfere with its proper operation.
HD Tune Pro can actually do a lot. For example, measure and display disk performance in a convenient table, provide information about the disk firmware, which can be very useful for a narrow number of specialists. You can also find out the disk capacity, the size of its buffer and in what mode it transfers data. You will also receive S.M.A.R.T data in the form of neat tables. In addition, you can conduct write testing and safely delete any files.
Download HD Tune Pro in Russian
You can download the HD Tune Pro disk testing program on our website completely free of charge via torrent; for this you will need to follow the link at the end of the article. The program is completely in Russian, you can easily understand all its functionality, and also determine exactly the tools that you need. Be careful, because to Russify and treat the program, you will have to perform simple manipulations, after which everything will work like clockwork!
Is your computer running slowly? Are you planning to upgrade your PC build by adding random access memory or by installing a more powerful processor? Of course, these hardware components play a significant role in the overall performance of the computer. But the computer, even with the most powerful processor may not live up to expectations if the assembly contains a hard drive with slow data read and write speeds.
And you may not even have to upgrade anything. In some cases, the cause of a slow or unstable computer may be elevated temperature hard drive due to poor ventilation of the case. And the problem can be solved by regular cleaning. system unit and moving it to a ventilated place.
How can you determine if your hard drive is causing a slow or unstable computer? This requires its diagnosis. For diagnostics hard drives There is a lot of different software, but, unfortunately, many worthwhile options can be downloaded on the Internet only with an English-language interface.
HD TUNE PRO – ABOUT THE PROGRAM’S CAPABILITIES
HD Tune is one of the few programs for diagnosing hard drives with the presence of the Russian language, clear interface and organization. The program is designed for ordinary users, and not just for 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 operating errors and damaged sectors,
- tools for viewing boot and hard drive status,
- determining the space occupied by folders on disk partitions,
- the procedure for erasing all files deleted from the hard drive without the possibility of restoring them in the future,
- and much more.
HD Tune Pro works with both classic hard drives - HDDs, and hard drives of a new format - SSD drives.
In the left top corner in the HD Tune Pro program 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 flash drive.
Diagnostics will be carried out regarding the selected device.
In the corner of the program window on the right there are its settings and several useful buttons for the convenience of diagnostics - copying information to the clipboard, taking a screenshot with storing the image in the buffer, and saving the screenshot to a file.
These buttons may be useful to you 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 drive temperature
The temperature of the hard drive will be displayed at the top center of the HD Tune Pro program window.
30-45° is the norm for a working hard drive. 50° is an elevated, but still acceptable temperature. You should be concerned if the temperature of your hard drive is 60° or more. To avoid overheating, it is necessary to urgently take measures to clean the inside of the system unit. It is advisable to make backup copies of important data.
70° and above is a death sentence for a hard drive. If it still works, copy the data to cloud storage and urgently take the computer to service center. As a rule, at this temperature the disk will fail in the near future.
Checking the speed of reading and writing data
The data read and write speed test will definitely come in handy if you decide to change your hard drive to a more productive model. This way you can compare the current performance of your hard drive with the performance offered by more modern or newer best models On the market. It would also be a good idea to carry out this test immediately after purchasing and installing a new HDD or SSD to see if the manufacturer was deceiving by indicating technical specifications slightly higher figures than they actually are.
When you launch HD Tune Pro, the Test tab appears. Here you need to select what exactly will be checked - reading or writing, and start the process with the appropriate button.
The program will determine the maximum, minimum and average speed of reading or writing data on your hard drive. Since hard drive manufacturers typically indicate maximum performance in the technical specifications of HDDs and SSDs, you'll need to roughly base your evaluation of your hard drive on the peak speed rating.
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 norm is considered to be a range from 2.5 to 16 ms, and the lower this figure, the faster the hard drive is.
Finding errors and bad sectors
“Search for errors” - in this tab of the program, you can, accordingly, search for errors in the operation of the hard drive, as well as test it for the presence of damaged sectors. To quickly check your hard drive, use the “Quick Scan” option. But such quick check will not tell you about possible physical damage to the hard drive. You can leave in-depth scanning, for example, overnight, so that the results of the program will be ready in the morning when you wake up.
HD Tune Pro will mark damaged sectors with red squares. The hard drive will look strewn with green squares without any problems.
Restoring damaged HDD sectors is the level of experienced specialists. It’s better not to do it yourself at home, but to take the computer to a service center. We repeat, if you have problems with the HDD, take care of backups valuable data.
Also details The status of the hard drive 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 wide the functionality they offer, can display a picture of the use of hard disk space comprehensively and individually by folder. Such functionality can be offered as part of system cleaners and optimizers, as well as in separate implementations of utilities specifically for working with hard drive. The HD Tune Pro program has a “Folder Calculation” tab to determine the space occupied by folders on disk partitions. Obviously, we are dealing with a mechanical translation of the program into Russian.
Click the “Scan” button and in a minute or two you will see the organization of folders in the partitions of your hard drive in the form of a directory tree with the size of the space occupied by the folders. Subfolders in the tree will open and will also appear in front of 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 system disk For normal operation. Analyze the folder with the settings of the AppData programs installed on your computer:
C:\Users\Account Name\AppData\Local
As a rule, quite weighty folders with settings of already deleted or almost unused programs. Track the volume of the “Temp” folders with temporary files: one of them is located here, in the “AppData” folder, the other – in the system Windows directory(C:\Windows\Temp). If there is no important data in the Temp folders, feel free to empty these folders.
But to delete data, you will still have to resort to the help of Windows Explorer or a third-party file manager. This HD Tune Pro feature is limited to reference information only.
You can also use the function of determining the space occupied by folders to carry out general cleaning among your user files.
Erasing all deleted data from your hard drive
When you programmatically delete data from your computer and empty the Recycle Bin Windows files still not physically erased from the magnetic platters of the HDD. Many programs for recovering deleted data work on this principle, which can resuscitate files until they are overwritten by new ones. The function of erasing all data deleted from a hard drive can rarely be found in file managers, cleaners and system optimizers, as a rule, it is part of 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 the hard drive, such a functional add-on as complete erasure of data will not be superfluous.
You can permanently delete all data from the hard drive in the “Erase” tab of the HD Tune Pro program.
To sum it up...
The above and other features of the HD Tune Pro program, of course, elevate it to the rank of “Must Have”. This program should be present on the computer of any advanced user, any enthusiast who cares what happens to his computer assistant on the other side of the colorful interface operating system– in terms of boring numbers, indicators and technical terms. Boring, however, so important for full and productive work with technology.
What do these devices have in common: hard disks, flash drives and SSD drives? That's right, these are modern data storage devices. They store your documents, audio and video content, software and much more. It can be said without exaggeration that these devices are one of the most valuable things for a modern person. Over the years, technologies have improved: information storage devices are becoming larger, faster, more reliable and smaller. However, if almost everything is clear with volume, then how to evaluate the measure of speed or reliability? For these purposes, there is a special type of software - test utilities. In this article we would like to talk about one of them - HD Tune ().
Versions
HD Tune exists in two versions: free (version from the 2.55 branch) and full (version from the 4.60 branch). The paid version is available for $35.
System requirements
operating system Windows family, not lower than Windows 2000, as well as 10 MB of free hard disk space.
Unfortunately, HD Tune did not work quite correctly on our test system - Windows 7 Ultimate x64. We did not display the temperature of the hard drives, SMART information, and also did not show data on the technologies supported by the hard drive. Similar problems were not observed in other operating systems.
Let's say right away that for home use The free version is also quite suitable. If you want to test the performance of various drives at a professional level, then you will not be able to do without the paid version with its additional features.
Below are screenshots of paid and free versions. You can see the differences with the naked eye.
Functionality
Features of the HD Tune utility program:
- Storage temperature monitoring
- Monitoring access to the device by various applications
- Performance Testing: Write/Read Speed
- File performance testing: file read/write speed
- Random access testing
- Cache test.
- Express testing: includes some simplified tests to quickly evaluate performance parameters.
- Permanently deleting all data from the storage device
- Device Information: detailed information about the device under test
- Scanning the drive surface for possible errors
- Checking the device status using SMART technology, with support for saving results to a report file.
- Support for technology to reduce the noise of the device or increase performance at increased noise levels.
- Overview of folders and their sizes on the device under test
- Supported devices: flash drives, hard drives, portable hard drives, RAID arrays, MP3 drives, etc.
As you can see, the program's capabilities are quite extensive. Some functions, it seems to me, are even redundant. For example, viewing folders on a disk; standard Explorer does an excellent job of this function.
Let's take a closer look at some of the functionality.
Drive performance testing
The most important thing, it seems to me, is testing the performance of the drive. The testing principle is as follows: the reading speed of the entire disk surface is measured, from a larger value of the disk radius to a smaller value (the corresponding speed will gradually decrease, since the angular speed of rotation of the disk decreases). The X axis shows the position in gigabytes. The Y axis shows the transfer rate in megabytes per second. By default, a reading test is performed. But you can also test for recording. Be careful, this test may cause data loss! Therefore, it is better to perform it only on an unallocated disk. The test result is average reading speed. Also interesting are the results of Access time - the speed of access to a given location on the disk, Burst rate - the possible theoretical maximum speed between the transfer interface (IDE, SATA, USB,...) and the operating system. CPU usage - shows the load on the processor while reading data.
File testing
This is the next interesting test. The essence of this test is as follows. A large file is written to the disk (the file size can be selected manually, but for greater accuracy it is better to take a fairly large file) in blocks of various sizes (from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB).
The test evaluates the size of the block, the reading/writing of which occurs with maximum speed. Unlike the previous test, this test will not result in data loss when writing a file to disk. But it requires that the drive under test be assigned a letter.
Random access
The random access test is also interesting. It reads and writes small blocks of data (from 512 bytes to 1 MB) to random areas on the disk. The result is displayed in three various types: number of read/write operations per second (the more the better), average access time (the less the better) and average speed (the more the better).
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Unfortunately, this test is quite low-level, and therefore its results will only be accurate on an unpartitioned hard drive. Be careful because... The write test may result in data loss! Therefore, it should only be done on an unallocated disk.
This is a collection of all tests in a stripped-down version, collected in one place and available at the click of a button. These tests can be used to evaluate various device performance parameters.
Disk monitoring
To be precise, this is not even a test, it is monitoring the activity of the selected logical drive, or the entire drive. Sometimes it can be very interesting to see what your C drive is currently using...
AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management)
For starters, there’s a rather interesting little thing - AAM or Automatic Acoustic Management.
This technology allows you to reduce the noise from a working hard drive, but the speed of the drive will also decrease, or increase performance, but then the noise will also increase. Unfortunately, this option did not work on our test system. Apparently you need to enable the ability to control acoustics in the BIOS motherboard, or in some other way. If you have thoughts on this matter, leave a comment.
Settings
In the settings, we can set HD Tune to start at system startup, or in a minimized form in the tray. You can set test parameters - either execution speed or accuracy (we left the value of this parameter as it is). You can also specify in which system the temperature will be displayed (Celsius or Fahrenheit), specify the critical temperature and color when its value reaches the specified limit. When analyzing SMART data, you can specify that log files are saved automatically from at a given interval. In the save settings, you can specify the default file name, storage location, etc.
conclusions
Beyond the scope of our review article were such HD Tune functions as information about the device and SMART parameters, running tests from command line, checking the disk surface for errors and safe removal files. We believe that such functions are not a priority in software, designed to test the performance of various drives. Utilities specially created for these purposes cope much better with these tasks.
What can be concluded? HD Tune - great utility for testing various storage devices, such as flash drives, hard drives, memory cards and even RAID arrays.
pros:
- free (unfortunately, with reduced functionality, but quite suitable for home use);
- very easy to use;
- test results are well visualized
- ability to save as a screenshot standard means utilities
Minuses:
- the full version is quite expensive - as much as 35$ / BYR 172,585.00
- deleting files and the “file manager” are a little out of place
Is your computer running slowly? Are you planning to upgrade your PC build by adding RAM or installing a more powerful processor? Of course, these hardware components play a significant role in the overall performance of the computer. But a computer, even with the most powerful processor, may not live up to expectations if the assembly contains a hard drive with slow data reading and writing speeds.
And you may not even have to upgrade anything. In some cases, the cause of slow or unstable computer operation may be increased hard drive temperature 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 can you determine if your hard drive is causing a slow or unstable computer? This requires its diagnosis. There is a lot of 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 program's capabilities
HD Tune is one of the few programs for diagnosing hard drives with the presence of the Russian language, a clear 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 operating errors and damaged sectors,
- tools for viewing boot and hard drive status,
- determining the space occupied by folders on disk partitions,
- the procedure for erasing all files deleted from the hard drive without the possibility of restoring them in the future,
- and much more.
HD Tune Pro works with both classic hard drives - HDDs, and hard drives of a new format - SSD drives.
In the upper left corner of the HD Tune Pro program 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 flash drive.
Diagnostics will be carried out regarding the selected device.
In the corner of the program window on the right there are its settings and several useful buttons for the convenience of diagnostics - copying information to the clipboard, taking a screenshot with storing the image in the buffer, and saving the screenshot to a file.
These buttons may be useful to you 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 drive temperature
The temperature of the hard drive will be displayed at the top center of the HD Tune Pro program window.
30-45° is the norm for a working hard drive. 50° is an elevated, but still acceptable temperature. You should be concerned if the temperature of your hard drive is 60° or more. To avoid overheating, it is necessary to urgently take measures to clean the inside of the system unit. It is advisable to make backup copies of important data.
70° and above is a death sentence for a hard drive. If it still works, copy the data to cloud storage and urgently take the computer to a service center. As a rule, at this temperature the disk will fail in the near future.
Checking the speed of reading and writing data
The data read and write speed test will definitely come in handy if you decide to change your hard drive to a more productive model. This way you can compare the current performance of your hard drive with the performance available in newer or better models on the market. It would also be a good idea to carry out this test immediately after purchasing and installing a new HDD or SSD to see if the manufacturer has deceived you by indicating in the technical specifications slightly higher figures than they actually are.
When you launch HD Tune Pro, the Test tab appears. Here you need to select what exactly will be checked - reading or writing, and start the process with the appropriate button.
The program will determine the maximum, minimum and average speed of reading or writing data on your hard drive. Since hard drive manufacturers typically indicate maximum performance in the technical specifications of HDDs and SSDs, you'll need to roughly base your evaluation of your hard drive on the peak speed rating.
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 norm is considered to be a range from 2.5 to 16 ms, and the lower this figure, the faster the hard drive is.
Finding errors and bad sectors
“Search for errors” - in this tab of the program, you can, accordingly, search for errors in the operation of the hard drive, as well as test it for the presence of damaged sectors. To quickly check your hard drive, 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 in-depth scanning, for example, overnight, so that the results of the program will be ready in the morning when you wake up.
HD Tune Pro will mark damaged sectors with red squares. The hard drive will look strewn with green squares without any problems.
Restoring damaged HDD sectors is the level of experienced specialists. It’s better not to do it yourself at home, but to take the computer to a service center. We repeat, if you have problems with the HDD, take care of backup copies of valuable data.
You can also see detailed information about the status of the hard drive 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 wide the functionality they offer, can display a picture of the use of hard disk space comprehensively and individually by folder. Such functionality can be offered as part of cleaners and system optimizers, as well as in separate implementations of utilities specifically for working with a hard drive. The HD Tune Pro program has a “Folder Calculation” tab to determine the space occupied by folders on disk partitions. Obviously, we are dealing with a mechanical translation of the program into Russian.
Click the “Scan” button and in a minute or two you will see the organization of folders in the partitions of your hard drive in the form of a directory tree with the size of the space occupied by the folders. Subfolders in the tree will open and will also appear in front of 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 irreplaceable 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 your computer:
C:\Users\Account Name\AppData\Local
As a rule, quite weighty folders with settings of already deleted or practically unused programs can be stored here. Track the volume 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 these folders.
But to delete data, you will still have to resort to the help of Windows Explorer or a third-party file manager. This HD Tune Pro feature is limited to reference information only.
You can also use the function of determining the space occupied by folders to carry out general cleaning among your user files.
Erasing all deleted data from your hard drive
When programmatically deleting data from a computer and cleaning Windows Recycle Bin files are still not physically erased from the magnetic platters of the HDD. Many programs for recovering deleted data work on this principle, which can resuscitate files until they are overwritten by new ones. The function of erasing all data deleted from a hard drive can rarely be found in file managers, cleaners and system optimizers; as a rule, it is part of more serious programs for formatting, creating hard drive 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 the hard drive, such a functional add-on as complete erasure of data will not be superfluous.
You can permanently delete all data from the hard drive in the “Erase” tab of the HD Tune Pro program.
To sum it up...
The above and other features of the HD Tune Pro program, of course, elevate it to the rank of “Must Have”. This program should be present on the computer of any advanced user, any enthusiast who cares what happens to his computer assistant on the other side of the colorful operating system interface - in terms of boring numbers, indicators and technical terms. Boring, however, so important for full and productive work with technology.