CNET Editors' review
Offering a variety of features for those who need to do maintenance on their hard drives, HD Workbench does an adequate job, but it's definitely not for beginners. The interface is minimal, providing little idea on the ramifications of selecting a task. Using SMART information, which is reported by the hard drive, a variety of data points are available, including the manufacturer, number of sectors, and the internal temperature. For those whose hard drives are about to fail, customizable disk imaging and disk-to-disk-copying features are available. The help file is more than adequate to answer most questions, but a powerful tool such as HD Workbench should be handled only by those who are comfortable working under the hard-drive hood.
Publisher's Description
From DIY Datarecovery:
HD Workbench is a Windows 2000/XP utility that can be used to examine your disk's health, utilizing SMART and reading and writing disk-surface tests. Data can be evacuated from potentially failing disks by making an exact sector-by-sector clone of the failing drive. Individual volumes can be backed up to raw image files, and the MBR and individual boot sectors can be backed up.
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All versions:
2.8 starsout of 8 votes
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Current version:
2.6 starsout of 8 votes
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My rating:
Write review
Results 1-6 of 6
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"User unfriendly, crashed"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Cons
This software shuns most conventions around 'good user design', and just assumes you already know what its all about. Doesn't even use the mapped drive letters when identifying drives - instead using 'drive 1, drive 2, drive 3' etc. When I used it to test my dodgy hard drive (completely blank so no actual data to check), it froze. Also seems to place a massive load on the CPU. Not worth the download unless you are out of options and want to roll the dice!
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"it's okay"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Pros
I used it to test my drive
Cons
the interface, reports and messages are remenant of windows 95.
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"Don't Know How But It Works"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Pros
I coundn't run check disk utility or defrag my HD at all. They would hang and go no further and display various errors. I tried and tried for days. Then I ran HD workbench one time and it completed a scan. Then I rebooted and check disk completed it's scan. Now I'm running fine again. Great product! Hint: After downloading do an upgrade to get the free trial.
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"Too unprofessional"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Summary
I dislike this program. It could be good -- but the author(s) should really try to take their time before putting out a program like this. My problems:
(1) Does not support RAID. At all. It doesn't even have error checking for RAID. When it encountered my RAID array, it said it was a 160GB disk (actually, it's 2 80s on a RAID 0). When I tried to do anything on that "160GB disk" it failed to do anything, which somewhat makes sense. I don't think you can go about getting SMART data from something that doesn't exist...
(2) Far too little information. The toolbars are too small and esoteric, and there's one major flaw: When running a test, or something -- when you click on a utility to run, it starts running it. For example, when trying to get the status of the disk, it runs it. Is that okay? Yes and no. It's nice that it gets started on the test right away, but it would be nice to have a bit more information. All I'm asking for is a little box that says "analyzing disk...please wait." Twice I almost closed the program forcibly because I thought it locked up....
(3) Difficult to interpret data. I'm a professional computer technician, and even I had some trouble interpreting the data. Granted, I did know what it meant, but it was difficult to get to the data in the first place, and certainly anyone without experience in hardware diagnosis would find most of the data incomprehensible and unusable.
Final recommendation? Don't use it unless you need specific data, such as one parameter from the SMART information -- and don't even think about using this on a RAID array. Much easier to use, and far more useful is "Drive Fitness Test" (DFT), which doesn't give you the specifics of SMART data, but does analyze it to determine if the drive is likely to fail and then reports back. -
"Could not restore"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Summary
I used this to create images of a few drives I was working on. The images were created perfectly, but when I attempted to restore the images to the same drives after setting up a RAID array, I received runtime errors and crashes. It took me 19 hours and much ingenuity to come up with a solution. Luckily, the image files this writes are simply raw data and readable by almost any disk utility including Linux dd and cp, which I ended up using!
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"Corrupted my boot partition"
Version: HD Workbench 1.1.31
Summary
I downloaded this software to check it out. I first ran the quick test. Then I tried the "Read only" test. After I tried the "read/write" test, I attempted to open "Solitair". I recieved an error stating the command could not be completed. I assumed the memory had become corrupted and rebooted. the next line says the rest "System disk not found. Please insert disk and press any key to continue" Lost everything I had. No recent backup. My fault, I guess. DON'T TEST THIS SOFTWARE WITHOUT A FULL, RECENT BACKUP!
