HD_Speed is one of the software solutions designed to help you determine the speed of your hard disks, relying on a very easy to ease interface with just a few features.
The application isn't a benchmarking tool per se, but just a way to test the hard disks and measure sustained and burst data transfer rates.
Although it's not quite addressed to beginners, the interface makes the whole thing a breeze, so there are only a few things to configure before starting the main test.
You can for example pick the drive you wish to test, the block size that will be used during the procedure, the testing mode and whether you want to test burst rate and to log results to file.
Afterward, you are ready to start the test and let the app do its magic. Even if you may be amazed by how smooth everything goes after pressing the “Start” button, it's better to avoid using the computer until the test is completed.
One of the things we missed the most during our test was a help section to guide beginners through the whole testing procedure, so those who're looking for some documentation should go over to Google and search the Internet.
A single test took around 10 minutes during out test, but this obviously depends on the hard disks capacity and on their speed when it comes to reading data.
Probably the ace up its sleeve is the fact that the app is being delivered as a very light package, so it takes just a few seconds to download and run it.
So all in all, HD_Speed might lend you a help when trying to determine the real speed of the hard disks, but that's basically the only thing it could do. It's a freebie though, so it still deserves a shot.