Thermal CVD method is in general used for the fabrication of TiC/$Al_2O_3$-coated carbide tools. The growth of TiC layer and the coating morphology depended on the chemical composition of the hard metal substrate on which the tool properties were strongly influenced. TiC-coated layer was grown by the diffusion of carbon from the substrate, whereas the growth of $Al_2O_3$ layer was unrelated to the composition of substrate. In the nitride hard coatings of Zr, Nb and Mo metals deposited on high speed steel substrate by magnetron sputtering, the reactivity of the metal elements was decreased with increasing group number in one period of the periodic system. The hard material films exhibited the highest adhesion with the chemical composition of stoichiometry or substoichiometry. The critical load as a measure of adhesion was evaluated using scratch tester. The CVD tools indicated the values of 80 and 40N in the coated layers with proper bonding to the substrate and with $eta$ phase of 1$mu extrm{m}$ in the interface respectively, but the nitride films prepared by sputtering of PVD showed only the values between 10 and 20N.