HDTach and Similar Benchmark Programs

[ShinyDiscoBalls]

"As nice as these programs are, repetitive use of HDTach and similar utilities add excessive stress to the drive. Even though failure may not occur immediately after benchmarking the drive they can weaken the drive and all it will take is another straw to break the camel's back."
"http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/ibm_maxtor/4.shtml

I read this online and I?m having a problem believing this. I believe that process of booting windows is potentially far more stressful than a 1 minute benchmark.

A hard drive that is "excessively stressed" by a simple read test like HDTach has no place in modern computers. Playing games modern games is far more stressful with hundreds of megabytes of data being read and thousands of head seeks during the course of play. If HDTaching a drive is the straw that breaks its back I might as well find out about it now before I put any data on it.

I?m wondering if anyone else agrees with my ideas about benchmarking or if they would like to correct my ideas about the subject.

 

[dkozloski]

I agree with you 100%. The drive is designed to be used.

 

[Bovinicus]

One would have to run HDTach thousands of times before it would cause the drive to fail. That is just nonsense. Maybe you shouldn't play games either, because that puts undue stress on your CPU and video card.

 

[Goi]

Defragging will probably cause more damage, especially since it takes place over the period of hours if you have a large HDD.

 

[ShinyDiscoBalls]

"Defragging will probably cause more damage, especially since it takes place over the period of hours if you have a large HDD."

Not defragging it is just as bad, you will wear out the drive faster by causing unnecessary seeks to read a heavily fragmented file. Not to mention the performance drop you will recieve due to the increased time to read the file off the platters. Defragging only takes hours if the volume is heavily fragmented, it can take as little as 10 minutes if you defrag every few weeks to a month. Just don't over do it and you'll be doing more good than harm.