Is your computer sick?

Are you tired of going to the doctor, of depending on an outside specialist to tell you what is wrong with you? You should know that we could extrapolate the same situation about your computer. But there is a way of avoiding that. All you need to do is to get involved with HDDScan. You probably don't know anything about it yet, but we are talking a freeware software that will work for hard drive diagnostics (RAID array servers, Flash USB, and SSD drives are also supported).

So, what does it do? The program can test storage devices for errors (Bad-blocks and bad sectors), show S.M.A.R.T. attributes, and change HDD parameters such as AAM, APM, etc. But let's stop talking about foreign languages here and get to the point. HDDScan can be useful for performing the regular "health test" for your drive and predicting its degradation, so you can prevent data loss and backup your files before contacting the data recovery service.

To summarize, we can conclude that HDDscan is a free–noncommercial utility elaborated to prevent/detect errors on most storage devices. A portable hard drive testing program for Windows that can run various tests on all sorts of internal and external hard drives. The program is easy to use, and all the optional features are easily accessible. You should never forget that it is not meant to fix or repair physically damaged data storage devices (SSD, hard drives, removable drives, or mobile phones).

Some highlights

Talking about the good points here, we should mention two main items: S.M.A.R.T. tests & S.M.A.R.T. reports. About the tests this program can run, we will be able to differentiate three of them:

Short test: Just a couple of minutes of your time to inspect the drive's leading electronics, scan a small part of the drive's surface and check sectors from the Pending list. In a nutshell, a quick drive testing;

Extended test: The time here will depend on the size of your drive, but it should not take more than 1 hour. With this, you will inspect the drive's main electronics and scan the whole drive's surface.

Conveyance test: Usually lasting several minutes, this one will inspect the drive's main electronics and logs that may have records that could indicate incorrect transportation or storage.

About the reports this tool has to offer, they will contain information about the drive's performance and health described in attributes. That way, you might find green icons meaning things are good; yellow ones, which will flag essential attributes that may indicate the hard drive's malfunction; and red icons, indicating big warnings to evaluate abnormal attribute values.

What about the Pros & Cons?

Talking about HDDscan, we will learn at the end that there are more good things than bad things to assess in the overall balance:

+ You can scan many different types of storage devices;

+ S.M.A.R.T. reports can be saved to a file like an MHT or TXT file;

+ Way too easy to use;

+ 100% portable;

- It only runs on Windows operating systems (Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows Server 2003);

- You cannot install it on your computer, even if you want to;

- No built-in tips, descriptions, or help documents are available, and it's recommended not to have any other programs running simultaneously while scanning.

Give it a try

HDDScan can be useful for performing the regular "health test" for your drive and predicting its degradation, so you can prevent data loss and backup your files before contacting the data recovery service. In the end, by far an exceptional piece of software with an interface that takes a little getting used to.

Additionally, the software can be used as the hard disk temperature monitor and reading/writing benchmark - a performance graph is displayed for every test. Plus, the tool is completely portable, which means you need to extract the files to make it work instead of installing it on your computer. You still have not given it a try? No doubt about it, this is one for your goody bag.