Editors' Review
Ashampoo HDD Control 3 keeps tabs on your computer's hard drive, including solid-state drives, logical drives, and removable and network drives. It cleans and defragments drives, erases online tracks, securely deletes files, and even undeletes some files. It monitors power-on count, disk temperature, and other conditions and issues alerts at specified thresholds. It's compatible with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), Automatic Acoustic Management, and Advanced Power Management.
Pros
Tests: HDD Control 3 can run benchmarking tests, regular and extended S.M.A.R.T. tests, and disk surface tests.
SSD wizard: HDD Control 3's SSD optimization wizard tweaks everything from TRIM to disabling boot-time defragmentation.
Duplicate finder: The built-in Duplicate Finder is a great addition. The Disk Space Explorer, File Wiper, and Undeleter also earn their keep.
Cons
Layout options: The disk tabs are satisfactory, but we'd like the option of a more traditional list view, especially in shareware.
Not a disk or partition manager: While HDD Control 3 can analyze and maintain your disks, it isn't a partition manager or a total disk backup solution -- nor does it pretend to be.
Bottom Line
Ashampoo's HDD Control 3 doesn't reformat disks or move partitions, but it provides decent protection. We'd like to see customizable views, but that's a minor point. HDD Control 3 earns it keep by helping prevent catastrophic (and far more expensive) disk failure and data loss.
Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of Ashampoo HDD Control 3. The trial version is limited to 10 days.
| Category | |
|---|---|
| Category | Utilities & Operating Systems |
| Subcategory | Maintenance & Optimization |
Publisher's Description
Ashampoo HDD Control 2017 provides an early warning system against imminent hard disk failure. This gives users time to back up precious files before a crash occurs. The program also analyzes S.M.A.R.T. data provided by modern hard disks to detect potential errors. The integrated history view allows users to predict future developments and take precautionary measures. Users can either view individual parameters such as temperature curves or the number of defective sectors or inspect the total running times of their drives, e.g. to locate potential overheating issues. Aside from monitoring the health states of your hard disks, the program also comes with various tools to maintain and declutter your drives. Finding and removing resource hogs and no longer needed files is fast and easy. Accidentally deleted files can be recovered with Undeleter, FileWiper helps users permanently erase sensitive data and Defrag optimizes hard disks for maximum performance and speed.
- Full hard disk analysis
- Intelligent analysis of S.M.A.R.T. values
- Find and delete duplicate files
- Safely detect memory hogs
- Powerful hard disk benchmark tool
