You need to make sure all your essential data is backed up before anything happens on your hard disk. For this purpose, you need to keep a tab on the hard disk’s health, so you can back up all your data if you suspect a hard disk failure. This article will show you different methods to check the hard disk’s health and get the necessary information.
Note: Hard drive failure can happen due to any specific reason, like physical force on it. So it is best to keep your important data backed up and not wait for hard disk failure signs.
1. Windows CHKDSK Tools
Windows CHKDSK Tool is a built-in Windows tool that will scan your drive for system errors and bad sectors and let you know if there’s a problem with your hard drive. It will scan and fix the issues it can improve and will let you know if there’s a bigger problem it can’t fix. You can use this tool to check tour hard drive’s health and repair bad sectors and errors if possible.
To use CHKDSK, right-click on the drive you want to check for errors and select “Properties”. Now click on the “Tools” tab, then click the “Check now” button.
A dialog will open with two options for fixing errors and scanning for bad sectors. You can select these options if you want to improve the mistakes and bad sectors. Otherwise, click “Start” to get a necessary report of challenging disk problems (if any).
This tool is fundamental and focuses on finding system errors and bad sectors. It will only let you know if there are any significant problems and nothing more. So only use it as a primary hard disk test and repair tool.
2. Use WMIC
WMIC is a command-line interface that allows you to do various administrative tasks, including checking your hard drive’s health. It uses the hard disk’s SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting) feature to see the status and come up with a simple conclusion, like “OK” or “Pred Fail”, and so on. Still, a basic command provides very little info, but it’s fast and has Windows built-in.
To test a hard disk with WMIC, press the “Windows + R” button to open the Run dialog box. Now, type cmd and click “OK” to open Windows Command Prompt.
Here, type:
Wmic
And press Enter. When the WMI interface is ready, type:
Diskdrive get status
And press Enter again. You will see the health of your hard disk after a short delay.
3. Use a third-party hard disk health check tool
You can also use a third-party hard disk health check tool that provides more information than good or bad status. These tools use the same “SMART” feature of the hard disk to retrieve data, just like WMIC does. However, they provide all the details for you, rather than just showing good or bad status.
CrystalDiskInfo
For this purpose, it is a straightforward yet powerful tool. It is an extremely light-weight free tool and provides all the necessary information, such as temperature, health status, hard disk type, and features, and other properties like scale. Read/write errors and spin-up time.
The standard tool appears as a 4 MB .exe file, and the installer contains ads, so make sure you use the “Custom Installer” option and uncheck the extra tool (ads). Once installed, all you need to do is launch the program, and you will see all information about your hard drive (s) in the main interface. The tool will also check the hard disk’s health every 10 minutes (by default) and warn you if anything goes wrong.
There are also others like new third-party health checkup tools. These are more advanced features with lots of extra features, but for the average user, CrystalDiskInfo should work correctly.
Conclusion
You can use the above tools to check the health of the hard disk on your Windows computer. If you don’t need any more details, then Windows’ built-in tools will do just fine. If not, it is recommended that you download a third-party hard disk health check tool.
