The main goal when designing a demanding hydraulic cylinder servo drive is to increase damping and avoid strong disturbances. Effective damping is increased with suitable control algorithms. Different profile generators are used to smooth the position reference and avoid heavy disturbances. Motion control is typically applied to applications with heavy demands on static and dynamic performance. Of all application parameters the inertia load has the strongest influence on the dynamics of a cylinder drive. In this case the motion control is an application where different inertia loads are transferred from one point to another by various programmable strokes and velocities. In this paper the influence of various inertia loads on the robustness of a hydraulic cylinder drive is presented. Dynamic behaviour as well as, position and stroke time accuracies are used in the estimation of experimental results, when different inertia loads are applied. The benefits and drawbacks of different motion profiles are discussed.