AS SSD Benchmark vs HD Tune: Pure Benchmark vs Diagnostic Suite
People often ask whether they should use AS SSD Benchmark or HD Tune, as if one replaced the other. In practice they barely overlap. AS SSD Benchmark answers one question — how fast is this drive on defined workloads? HD Tune, especially HD Tune Pro, is a diagnostic suite that also happens to benchmark: its real territory is SMART health data, error scanning and drive utilities. This page draws the boundary clearly, so you use each tool for the job it actually does. AS SSD itself is on our download page.
What AS SSD Benchmark does — and stops there
AS SSD Benchmark runs six synthetic tests and three copy tests: sequential, 4K and 4K-64Thrd transfers, access time, a compression test, and timed copies of ISO, Program and Game file sets. Its synthetic tests bypass the operating system cache, its test file is 1 GB by default, and it summarises results as Read, Write and Total scores using a simplified weighted formula. The window also shows the drive model, firmware, controller driver and whether the partition alignment is correct — genuinely useful configuration clues, and the limit of its diagnostic ambition.
That is where it ends. AS SSD Benchmark does not read SMART attributes, does not report temperature, does not estimate remaining lifespan, does not scan the surface for errors, does not update firmware and does not securely erase a drive. If a result looks wrong, AS SSD can tell you the drive is slow or misaligned, but it cannot tell you the drive is failing. Treating a good AS SSD score as proof of drive health is the most common mistake new users make with it.
What HD Tune adds
HD Tune Pro, from EFD Software, is built around the health side of storage. Its benchmark measures transfer rate across the drive, access time and burst behaviour, but its distinguishing features sit in the other tabs: a Health view that reads and interprets SMART attributes, an Error Scan that checks the surface block by block for damaged areas, and utility functions such as secure erasing. For a drive that is making noises, throwing errors, disappearing intermittently or suspected of wearing out, those are the tools that matter — no benchmark score can substitute for a SMART report and a clean (or revealing) error scan.
The trade-offs are age and price. The free HD Tune 2.55 edition is very old, and the current product is HD Tune Pro 6.10, offered as a 15-day trial after which a licence is required. Its benchmark also predates the NVMe era in design: it will happily measure a modern SSD, but its transfer-rate graph was conceived for spinning disks whose speed falls across the platter, so interpret its benchmark as a rough check rather than a precision SSD measurement. For pure SSD speed testing, AS SSD’s 4K and 64-thread tests and total score remain the more informative design.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | AS SSD Benchmark | HD Tune / HD Tune Pro |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | SSD performance: Seq, 4K, 4K-64Thrd, access time, Copy and Compression tests | Transfer-rate benchmark plus SMART health, error scanning and drive utilities |
| Score / result form | Per-test MB/s or IOPS and a weighted Total score; results exportable | Transfer graph, SMART attribute table and health verdict, scan map of good and damaged blocks |
| Platform | Windows only; portable | Windows |
| Licence and price | Freeware by Alexej Schepeljanski; free | HD Tune Pro 6.10: 15-day trial, then paid; the basic free edition is the old 2.55 |
| Maintenance status | Final version 2.0.7316.34247, January 2020 | Pro line current at 6.10; free edition long unchanged |
| Best for | Measuring and comparing SSD speed, checking alignment and controller mode | Checking whether a drive is healthy: SMART status, surface errors, pre-disposal erasing |
A practical workflow that uses both
When a system slows down, order matters. First check health: a SMART view such as HD Tune Pro’s Health tab (or a free monitor such as CrystalDiskInfo, covered in AS SSD Benchmark vs CrystalDiskInfo) will flag a failing drive in seconds, and a failing drive should be backed up or cloned — see our guide to cloning your OS drive to an SSD — before you spend time benchmarking it. If health looks fine, run AS SSD Benchmark: low scores with a “BAD” alignment or an IDE-mode controller note point to configuration, while low scores with everything correct point to a drive that is full, hot or simply outclassed. Finally, an error scan is the tie-breaker when symptoms persist despite good health indicators and normal scores.
Which one should a beginner install first?
Start with AS SSD Benchmark, for three practical reasons. It is free with no trial clock, it is portable so there is nothing to install or remove, and its single window answers the question beginners actually arrive with — “is my SSD fast, and is anything obviously misconfigured?” — including the alignment and controller-mode display that catches the most common setup faults. Add a health tool as the second step, not the fifth: the free option most Windows users pair with AS SSD is CrystalDiskInfo, which covers SMART status and temperature, while HD Tune Pro earns its licence fee when you need its error scan on a drive you already suspect. That ordering — speed tool first because it is simplest, health tool immediately after because scores prove nothing about survival — gives a beginner complete coverage without paying for a diagnostic suite they may never need. What matters is that both halves get covered; which brand supplies the health half is a secondary choice.
Verdict by scenario
“How fast is my SSD?” AS SSD Benchmark. “Is my drive dying?” HD Tune Pro’s health and scan tools — AS SSD cannot answer that question at all. “My PC is slow and I don’t know why”: health first, benchmark second, in that order. The tools are complements, not rivals, and the only wrong choice is expecting either one to do the other’s job.
Get AS SSD from the download page, and for the full division of labour across all the major utilities, see the best SSD benchmark tools overview.