HDD Scan is a very practical tool that lets you test your hard drive, as well as analyze statistical reports.

Since the application doesn't need to be installed, your Windows registry keys remain intact. You can also place HDD Scan on an external device and directly run it on any computer.

The user interface is simple and eye-catching. Once you have selected a drive, you can start performing various tests and view their results in the Test Manager below.

For instance, you can get a S.M.A.R.T. report (e.g. "Raw Read Error Rate", "Seek Error Rate", "Power-On Hours Count", "Airflow Temperature").

But you can also perform surface tests in which you view the model, firmware and serial of your drive, and input "Start LBA", "End LBA" and "Block Size" to verify, read, erase or butterfly-read it.

Furthermore, you can perform a S.M.A.R.T. offline test (short, extended or conveyance test), take the monitor's temperature, use IDE and SCSI features, get a drive identity report (e.g. cache size, RPM, power management, password protection), as well as build a command line and change the interface's appearance.

Results can be printed or saved to file (HTML, HTM, MHT, TXT). The program uses a moderate amount of system resources (except in the case of a S.M.A.R.T. offline test when CPU usage significantly rises), comes with an online help file (that can be accessed from the "About" window) and didn't freeze or crash during our tests.

Since this tool presents technical information about hard drives and a risk of erasing files, we mainly recommend HDD Scan to power users.