HD Tune Pro Review

Purchasing a brand new hard drive (mechanical or solid state) always has its perks. Fresh new storage medium with high transfer speeds and exceptional read and write performance from the sequential and random categories. While a hard drive might exhibit unmatched performance in reviews, several retailers and stores normally have an unethical habit of selling consumers faulty hard drives that will deliver slower speeds or in the worst case scenario, will start to fail after a brief period of time. In those conditions, having a software that will monitor the hard drive’s health and temperature will always be an added bonus to keep the person aware on when to replace the storage medium after making a backup of course. HD Tune pro is one such software that will allow the user to monitor all the vitals of the hard drive, along with the level of performance that it delivers.

What does the software do?

HD Tune is present in two versions; a free one and of course the Pro version. We will be looking at the Pro version and see what advantages the software grants to users in order to keep them vigilant to the performance, temperature and life span of their hard drive. For starters, the Pro version of HD Tune presents your hard drive’s real world performance by running benchmarks that are categorized under the following tests:

Sequential read and write tests (test will vary by stressing the storage medium through varied capacity tests)

Random read and write tests (test will vary by stressing the storage medium through varied capacity tests)

Error scanning

While it is not recommended that the user keeps on running the benchmark to note down performance of the storage medium since it taxes the hard drive, the user should keep in mind that overtime a mechanical hard drive tends to lose its performance and can only be forced to run at its optimum state by defragmenting it, running error checking utilities on it, clearing out registry keys, not filling up the partitions of the drive with content to the point that there isn’t sufficient space left and many more ways.

In addition, HD Tune Pro also retrieves the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) info from your hard drive. The S.M.A.R.T. info provides information on the current life of your hard drive. In terms of user interface, the software is very easy to use, utilizing a traditional tabbed dialog interface. The user can select the drive that they want to test out. There are several tabs available, and each one will deliver a different set of information related to the drive.

Currently, the Pro version carries a price tag of $35 and offers a whole list of features that are currently not available in the free version. The Pro version however, is recommended for users who perform regular and extensive tests on mechanical hard drives, solid state drives, solid state hybrid drives, and external hard drives. For casual users who want to monitor the health and performance of their hard drives; the free version will suffice.