Samsung HUTIL v2.10 Review

Test Samsung hard drives for free from any operating system with this bootable tool

By
Tim Fisher
Photo of Tim Fisher, Lifewire GM and Writer
Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.
lifewire's editorial guidelines
Updated on December 18, 2023

In This Article

Jump to a Section

Samsung HUTIL is a bootable hard drive testing program that can run a surface scan test on Samsung hard drives.

It's a little more difficult to use than other programs because it doesn't have a regular graphical user interface. However, because it's a bootable program, it also means it works regardless of what operating system is installed.

Samsung HUTIL

Samsung HUTIL Pros & Cons

There are a few major limitations, but the program is great if you have a Samsung drive.

What We Like

  • Works with all operating systems.

  • Isn't too hard to use.

  • Also functions as a data destruction tool.

What We Don't Like

  • Only works with Samsung hard drives.

  • Must boot to a disc to use the program.

  • Has a text-only user interface.

More About Samsung HUTIL

While Samsung HUTIL can scan Samsung drives only, it will actually still load and find any non-Samsung drives, but it won't be able to run any diagnostics on them.

If you're not sure if you're using a Samsung drive, open a system information tool on your computer. For example, if you use Speccy, the hard drive manufacturer is listed in the Storage tab.

You can run Samsung HUTIL from a CD or floppy disk by downloading Hutil210_ISO.rar or Hutil210.rar, respectively, from the download page.

In addition to a surface scan test, Samsung HUTIL can also erase all the files on the disk using the Write Zero data sanitization method.

Using Samsung HUTIL

The Samsung HUTIL program files are held in a RAR file, which means, depending on your operating system, you'll need an archive extractor to open them.

If you need help burning the ISO file to a disc, which is very different than burning other types of files to discs, see our How to Burn an ISO Image File to a DVD tutorial.

No matter which download you choose, the one intended for a CD or the one for a floppy disk, you'll need to change the boot order in BIOS to run the program. See How to Boot From a CD for more on that.

You may need to replace the hard drive if it fails any of your tests.

My Thoughts on Samsung HUTIL

Samsung HUTIL isn't the easiest program to use but it's not that hard, either. Plus, it's really nice that it works with any operating system.

However, the obvious disadvantage is that it only supports Samsung hard drives. If you use a different brand of hard drive but you still need a hard drive tester, there are several others to pick from, like Seagate SeaTools, HDDScan, and Windows Drive Fitness Test.

I do like that you can use Samsung HUTIL to erase the contents of a drive. While the method of data sanitization isn't the most secure, it's still a nice feature to include. It means you can make the program double as both a Samsung HDD testing tool and a data destruction program.

Was this page helpful?