How to check your hard drive’s health

Hard drive health is a crucial aspect to keep your data safe and preventing it from being lost into oblivion. While a majority of modern computers today use solid state drives, or SSDs, many older machines out there continue to use HDDs, or Hard Disk Drives.

For such machines, maintaining their basic hard drive health is an important step to keep the data intact, at least until you upgrade anyway. To do that, here’s a quick guide that details all the hard drive health check up steps you need to take.

Why consider your hard drive’s health?

First of all, before we discuss how, let’s discover the reason why you should keep track of your hard drive health. A hard drive plays host to your OS, applications and important data, all of which are stored on it. It may, over time, lead to issues like bad sectors, disk errors or mechanical faults, endangering the safety of your data. Regular checkups help you to detect early warning signals of possible issues like the need to back up your data or replace the hard drive to prevent failures in future.

Check health with built-in Windows tools

Windows laptop users can easily check their hard drive’s health in a step-by-step manner. The operating system comes with an integral feature that will allow disc condition information.

Step 1: Open Command Prompt
Run “cmd” in the Windows search bar following which, right-click on Command Prompt and choose “Run as administrator.” This will give you the required permissions to perform system commands.

Step 2: Run a S.M.A.R.T. test
A tool called S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) analyses and reports on different health aspects of a hard disk within the system. S.M.A.R.T. data can be read using third-party software or software tools like CrystalHDInfo which comes as built-in tools. This tool displays a comprehensive description of the status your hard-drives reports like temperature, the speed of spin, and sector of reallocation counters.

Check health with third-party tools

While the functions provided by the Windows tool are enough for hdd health check, other software tools may bring more in-depth probes for your hard disk drive health check. There are numerous free and paid options to choose from among these, including HD Tune, Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and Seagate SeaTools. These tools mostly have user-friendly interfaces and produce detailed reports about the condition of your hard drive which helps you to make informed decisions about your hard drive.

Constantly performing check-ups on your hard drive will be a proactive measure in preserving a safe and functional digital space. Utilising essential built-in Windows tools such as CHKDSK and going through third-party solution options will help you keep ahead of potential problems, secure the data and keep your hard drive undamaged for a longer period. Practicing this easy maintenance ritual will help you keep your hard drive top-condition and problem-free, by years.

To sum up, a good hard drive is just the base or foundation of a well running computer system. Therefore, regularly conduct a checkup to stay updated with your online world. Moreover, in the case of hard drives, it’s true that a stitch in time saves nine (Terabytes).