1. Check Hard Disk Health From the BIOS
As long as you’re using a relatively modern motherboard, you can run hard drive checks in the BIOS, free from any OS-based interference. Reboot your PC, and after it’s switched off and on again repeatedly, press Delete, F2, F12, or whichever buttons the boot screen tells you will take you to your BIOS. You can also set Windows to boot directly into the BIOS. Once in the BIOS, the exact instructions will depend on your motherboard manufacturer. For instance, on our old MSI Mortar WiFi B550M in the BIOS, we can go to “Settings -> Advanced -> NVME Self-Test” to test the health of the NVMe drives. On newer HP laptops, there’s a separate UEFI diagnostic tool that you can access by pressing F2 during boot. Following this, you can go to “Component Tests -> Hard Drive” to run tests on one or more drives on the PC. The BIOS is also a good place to see whether the hard drive you want to check is actually being detected by your PC/motherboard. On Dell and HP laptops, you should be able to check hard drive health by going to the BIOS and looking for “Diagnostics.”
2. Optimize and Defrag
Traditional SATA hard drives may have largely made way for much faster solid-state drives, but they’re still very popular and remain an affordable way to store things like pictures, videos and other non-strenuous file types. SSDs work a little differently, and while they never need defragmentation (because fragmentation relates to where the data is physically stored on the drive, which isn’t a factor on SSD), they do sometimes need optimizing. If you feel like your non-SSD hard drive is slowing down, then you should check to see how fragmented it is. You can do this using the defrag tool built into Windows. You can also optimize your SSD on the Windows defrag and optimize tool, though the system should be taking care of the process automatically. Note: we actually found that the free app Defraggler does a better job of detecting and reducing fragmentation, but not everyone wants to install extra apps when the functionality is built right in to the OS.
3. Use the HDD Manufacturer’s Tools
Most major hard drive manufacturers provide free robust tools to monitor your hard drive health and performance. The first step to knowing which one to use is, of course, knowing the make of your hard drive. If you already know the make of your hard drive, you can skip this part. To help you out, the following are links to the relevant download pages of some of the biggest hard drive brands:
Western DigitalSeagateSamsung
Each of these tools functions a little differently, but most importantly, each one has diagnostic features that let you test your hard drive health.
4. Windows CHKDSK Tool
The Windows CHKDSK tool is a built-in Windows tool that will scan your hard disk to find system errors and bad sectors. It also helps check hard disk health by showing you any errors. It’ll both scan and fix problems (if possible) and will let you know if there is a bigger problem that it can’t fix. You can use this tool to both check disk health and fix bad sectors and errors if possible.
5. Use WMIC
WMIC is a command-line interface that lets you perform many administrative tasks, including checking hard disk health. It uses the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature of hard disks to see the status and provide a simple conclusion, like “OK,” “Pred Fail,” etc. It is still a very basic command that offers very little information but is a quick built-in feature of Windows.
6. Use a Third-Party Hard Disk Health Checking Tool
You can also use a third-party hard disk health checking tool that will offer much more information than just good or bad status. These tools use the same “S.M.A.R.T” feature of hard disks to fetch data, just like WMIC. However, they provide far more detail instead of just showing good or bad statuses.
CrystalDiskInfo
For this purpose, CrystalDiskInfo is a really simple, yet powerful, tool. It is a free-to-use tool that is extremely light and offers all the required information, such as temperature, health status, hard disk type and features, and other attributes, like read/write error rate, spin-up time, etc. When you download and extract the files, select the right tool for your Windows version. We recommend using the 64-bit version, “DiskInfo64” in this case. But you can also select “DiskInfo32” if you want to run the tool without installing anything. Once you launch the tool, nothing will appear to be happening for around 10 seconds until you see a full report. In the “Function” menu, you can select more advanced options. You can even have it check hard disk health at startup. There are also other third-party hard disk health-checking tools like Hard Disk Sentinel and HDDScan. These are much more advanced with many extra features, but for an average user, CrystalDiskInfo should work perfectly. You can use the above-mentioned tools to check hard disk health on Windows. If you don’t need extra details, then the Windows built-in tools should work great.
What Should I Do If My Hard Drive Is Failing?
All of these methods are great to check hard disk health, but they don’t fix the problem. As a computer owner, there is one rule you should follow: always act quickly as if your hard drive could fail tomorrow. Even if the above methods show your hard drive health is fine, something could go wrong the next day, such as physical damage from a drop or a virus. Of course, if the results of any of the checks above are less than positive, don’t wait until tomorrow – take action immediately. A few things you should do the moment you realize your hard drive is failing include: Another option you may consider is removing the faulty drive and working completely from a USB drive or external hard drive. This allows you to connect to any computer and have the same setup. You could have a similar Windows setup from USB with these top Linux distros. Image credit: Vincent Botta via Unsplash All screenshots by Crystal Crowder
Increasingly longer boot timesSystem crashes, especially when they happen oftenBlue Screen of Death appears, especially if it happens frequentlyBIOS errors upon startupMissing files (means segments are failing)Longer file load times in File Explorer
If the answer is no, it’s probably best to upgrade to a new PC if possible. Otherwise, you may end up with a new hard drive while other hardware starts to fail or becomes obsolete. While you can’t prevent any manufacturing defects, treating your PC as if it’s the only one you’ll ever have can help extend your hard drive’s lifespan by a year or more. If you’re already noticing issues, though, it’s too late and time to back up your data and either get a new hard drive or a new PC.
