Remember that friend whose precious data on his hard drive crashed and he couldn’t recover it? If you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, you need to check the health of your hard drive periodically. Wondering how? Well, there are four ways to check hard drive health on Windows.
Your hard drive won’t fail if you use a fairly new PC. However, keeping an eye on things will keep you safe before things spin south. There are several ways to check the health of the hard drive built into Windows.
In addition, most hard disk manufacturers provide tools to check the health of their drives. So it’s all about your preferences. Scroll down to find out all the ways.
- 1 1. Use HDD/SSD Manufacturer’s Tool to Check Drive Health
- 2 2. Use Windows CHKDSK Tool to Check Disk Health
- 3 3. Check hard drive health with Windows WMIC Tool
- 4 4. Use a Third Party Hard Disk Health Checker: HDDScan (Free Tool)
- 5 Can I check hard drive health using BIOS
- 6 Bonus: Use Disk Defrag and Optimizer
- 7 Windows Disk Health FAQ
- 8 Check before it’s too late
1. Use HDD/SSD Manufacturer’s Tool to Check Drive Health
This is one of the simplest but most effective methods to check the health of your drive. Most companies that make hard drives, like Western Digital, Samsung, and Seagate, create tools that allow you to check the health and performance of your hard drive.
Well, if you are not sure about your hard drive manufacturer, you can use Windows Device Manager to find information about the drive. Here’s how you can do it.
Step 1: Press the Windows key, type equipment management, and press Enter.
Step 2: Click Drive and make a note of the hard drive name or model.
Step 3: Now enter the name or model number of your hard drive into Google and click on the manufacturer’s official website link.
Example: WD My Passport 25W1 . USB Device
Step 4: You will go to the manufacturer’s support page. Now, search for hard drive utility.
We have listed the top support pages of hard disk manufacturers.
If you can’t find your manufacturer’s support page, follow the methods below to check the health of your drive. Do not download any utility software from unwanted random websites.
2. Use Windows CHKDSK Tool to Check Disk Health
As you might have guessed, CHKDSK stands for “Check Disk” and it is available in all versions of Windows. It scans through the sectors on your hard disk to check the health of the hard drive and only marks the malfunctioning sectors as ‘bad’ to fix them later. Furthermore, it tells you if it can’t fix the problem for you to deal with. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Press the Windows key, type Command prompt, and click ‘Run as administrator’.
Click Yes in the prompt.
Step 2: Paste the command mentioned below in the command prompt and press Enter.
chkdsk
Microsoft has a complete list of parameters to use with CHKDSK to check the health of your hard disk. Notably, you can also use chkdsk /f /r to fix bad sectors and restore any readable data if possible.
That’s about it. The system will scan the drive when you reboot and will give you an indication of the drive’s health status.
3. Check hard drive health with Windows WMIC Tool
This is another Windows command-line tool that helps you check and manage your Windows tasks, including performing a health check on your hard disk. In case you were wondering, WMIC is an abbreviation for Windows Management Instrumentation Command.
Now, follow the steps mentioned below.
Step 1: Press the Windows key, type Command prompt, and click Run as administrator.
Step 2: Paste the command mentioned below in the command prompt and press Enter.
wmic
Step 3: In the WMIC interface, type the command below and press Enter.
Diskdrive get status
With the above command, a tool will be launched and within a second it will give you the health status of your hard disk.
That’s about it. If you feel that the steps are complicated or the execution of the commands takes a long time, you can choose third-party software to perform the disk health check for you. Move on to the next method.
4. Use a Third Party Hard Disk Health Checker: HDDScan (Free Tool)
There are many third-party drive health checking tools, and one of them is HDDScan. This free tool checks the health of your hard drive by viewing your PC’s SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) values and disk temperature.
Furthermore, the tool has various testing features, such as Butterfly Wing reading mode, Linear reading, Linear Verification, and Spindle Start. This makes it a great choice for a disk health checker. So here’s how to use this tool to check the health of the disk.
Step 1: Download and install the HDDScan software using the link below.
Step 2: Open the software and select the hard drive from the top bar.
Step 3: Now, click on the SMART option to view the disk health details.
That is all. You can see details of all parts of the hard drive. Also, you can play around with this tool, test read and write speed, check temperature, etc.
Can I check hard drive health using BIOS
Well, all the methods mentioned above will be more than enough for you to understand the health of your hard disk. However, you can access your BIOS settings to check the health of the drive if you want to take it one step further. This is for advanced users only; we wouldn’t recommend this step as most of the methods above get the job done.
Furthermore, if your non-SSD hard drive is slowing down, you can see how fragmented it is by using Windows’ built-in defrag tool instead of completely formatting the hard drive.
Bonus: Use Disk Defrag and Optimizer
This step is more related to cleaning junk space on slow device to make it faster. And unlike hard drives, SSDs don’t store data physically. Therefore, this step does not apply to SSDs; however, there is no harm in optimizing the SSD. Follow the steps below.
Step 1: Press Windows key, type “defragment and optimize drivers,’ and click Run as administrator.
Step 2: Select the drive and click Optimize to run a scan for fragmented files and optimize it for better performance.
So that’s how you can check your hard drive health on Windows and optimize your drive for speed. If you have more queries, move on to the next section.
Windows Disk Health FAQ
1. How do I know if my hard drive is damaged?
A failed hard drive can show the following symptoms: it may be completely inaccessible or have sluggish performance, as well as missing files.
2. Is hard drive health fixable?
You cannot repair the hard drive completely because it is not possible to replace the damaged parts of the hard drive (read/write head, surface, etc.). The only thing you can change is how the hard drive is used.
3. How long is the life of the hard drive?
The average hard drive has a lifespan of three to five years.
4. HDD or SSD which is more durable?
From a purely numerical point of view, SSDs have a lifespan of about 20 years compared to HDDs of about 6 years. However, it’s important to note that these are not permanent and you may need to replace your HDD or SSD more or less often, depending on many factors.
5. Can an external hard drive be plugged in?
No, because it can cause wear and tear on the drive. Over time, this can lead to your hard drive failing sooner than if it was only used intermittently. To avoid this problem, you should unplug the external hard drive when not in use.
Check before it’s too late
There are many reasons why a hard disk fails or is damaged. However, the most common reason is its longevity and how you use it. So, careful use of hardware products, such as hard disks, can help them last longer. The above are all the methods you can use to check the health of your hard drive on Windows and take the necessary precautions to increase its life.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
