Introduction If you aren't aware of the condition of your hard drives, you may not be able to save your valuable data before it's too late. Not all hard drive crashes are random, so you may have time to backup your data before it fails completely. All modern drives have a monitoring technology called S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) that continuously monitors a number of parameters on a hard drive. Many parameters can be monitored by S.M.A.R.T.
Including read and write error rates, seek error rates, spin up time, temperature and much more. To effectively warn you when certain parameters are degrading or reaching their threshold you need a program that can track these changes and show them to you. Allowing you to test and see whether a hard drive is capable of storing your data safely, giving you time to backup your important files and start looking for a replacement drive should you need to. A monitoring program alone is not fully capable of showing you whether the integrity of your files can be maintained on a particular hard drive. It's a good idea to scan for bad (unreadable) blocks of data with either HDDScan or HD Tune at least once a month to ensure your drive is not degrading and data isn't being lost. See also for a more indepth look.
Rated Products. No individual drive temps in tray, drive temp is not easily seen, strictly a monitor, no surface tests or S.M.A.R.T. Tests, TEC throws up ever changing dates and largely inaccurate. Summary For continuous monitoring I recommend CrystalDiskInfo for its well rounded set of features and HDDScan which is an exceptional diagnostic program.
Hard drive diagnistic tool HDDScan consist of only one file, hddscan.exe. Without installer. It working properly from portable storage devices.
Both are excellent pieces of software. To ensure your drive isn't degrading in ways that may not be readily apparent with a monitoring program alone, I recommend testing the surface of your drive with HDDScan or HD Tune. Other Hard Drive Health Monitoring and Diagnostic Programs.
is an Open Source hard drive benchmarking program. The installer has the options to install PC Matic (trialware) and the ASPCA browser addon. The portable zip doesn't include anything extra. It's updated regularly. is a benchmark program that measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard drives, CD/DVD-Rom, flash cards/sticks, floppies, etc. With a real-time graphical display.
![Portable Hdd Scan Portable Hdd Scan](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125500843/290091435.jpg)
It's updated regularly. is a benchmarking tool that is designed to be a real world benchmark rather than a synthetic benchmark. It requires.NET Framework 2.0. is a program that monitor voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures as well as S.M.A.R.T. It only detected my internal drive. is designed to monitor the S.M.A.R.T. Status and the temperature, as well as manage AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) and APM (Advanced Power Management).
It could not detect my external HD. is a portable and simplistic block scanner. No longer updated. is a benchmarking program that can be obtained from instead of registering on the main site.
is a benchmarking tool. They're in the process of completely rewriting it. requires.NET Framework 2.0. It has surface and S.M.A.R.T.
Tests as well as other features. There is also a DOS version. offers two utitlity programs (smartctl, smartd) to control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T. is a simple monitoring program.
It hasn't been updated in a while. Doesn't detect my USB HD. is a monitoring program. It only detects internal hard drives and hasn't been updated in more than a few years now. A few all-in-one diagnostic tools that boot directly from a CD/DVD are the, and the. Related Products and Links You might want to check out these articles too:.
Editor This software review is copy-edited. Please help edit and improve this article. Please rate this article. I just downloaded HWMonitor from the same people who do CPUID. It seems pretty good. It gives you information on lots of 'stuff' inside your computer: disk drives, your CPU, fans, power supply, etc. Specifically, HWMonitor provides info on temperatures, electrical measurements, fan speeds, CPU frequencies, and core utilizations.
It updates the display every 1/2 second or so. The free version does not see my USB-connected drives. The app is actively being maintained. The current version was released a few months ago.
![Network scan portable Network scan portable](http://hddscan.com/img/doc/18.jpg)
The installer didn't try to foist any unrelated software on me (yay!). Go to to download. or to post comments. The HDDScan and SpeedFan seem like a good combination to have. The big question is HOW do you interpret the results of these SMART, temperature, and voltage scans etc.
How does one know or find out if the result values (attributes etc.) are okay or at a WARNING/CRITICAL level? These sites for these programs do not give much guidance in getting that information. More instruction on how to use each of these programs might be helpful too yet I have not found sites that explain them further. Direction in getting this assistance would be helpful.
or to post comments.