How to Check Hard Disk Health in Windows

The health of your computer’s hard disk is a critical factor that directly influences the overall stability and performance of your system. Data loss, system crashes, and an unsatisfactory computing experience can all be caused by a hard drive that is malfunctioning or is about to fail. So it is necessary to run a hard disk health check in Windows over a specific period of time, to take precautions before facing any severe damage.

This article demonstrates how to check hard drive health in Windows.

What are the Symptoms of Hard Drive Failure

Here are the logical Hard Drive Failure Symptoms

• A blue screen of death appears
• Frequent system crashes
• Files/folders disappearing
• The operating system is unable to boot
• Longer file load times in File Explorer

How to Check the Health of Hard Drive

To check the health of your system’s hard drive, use either of the following methods:

Method 1: Check the Hard Drive Physically

Physical Hard Drive Failure Symptoms:

• Overheating
• Sharp screeching or clicking sounds
• Slow boot or slow processes

Method 2: Using Windows Check Disk

If you want to check the health of your hard drive, whether it is working fine or not, and what is the status of the hard drive. To know all these, follow the below image right-click on the Devices and Drive drop-down, and select the properties: 

Under the tools tab, click on the Check button:

Click on the Scan Drive option to proceed with the test scan:

Note: This procedure takes some time to complete:

No errors were found, which means your hard drive is running fine. 

Method 3: Through Command Prompt

A command prompt is a program that is used to take the command from the user and perform administrative functions. Command prompt is a valuable tool for assessing the condition of the hard drive.

To check the status of the hard drive, open the command prompt from the start menu and click to run as administrator:

There are two commands you can use to ascertain the present state of your hard drive:

• S.M.A.R.T Check.
• Using CHKDSK Command.

Using the S.M.A.R.T Check

S.M.A.R.T stands for Self-Mointinering, analysis reporting technology. It is used to monitor the system including hard drive and SSD. To run the S.M.A.R.T Check, enter the following command to check the status of the hard drive:

wmic diskdrive get status, model

Using the CHKDSK Command

To detailed examine the hard drive status, use the chkdsk command:

chkdsk

Note: If the chkdsk finds any issue, it will automatically repair it,

Method 4: Using the HDDScan to Check the Health of the Hard Drive

The HDDscan is free software used to scan the storage devices and diagnose the issues regarding the hard drive. It runs different kinds of external or internal tests for the hard drive. It is completely portable software means you can simply download the file from the internet and use it, it does not require any installation process:

Step 1: Download the HDDScan

Visit the official site to download the file:

Step 2: Accept the License Agreement 

Once you extracted the zip file, then click to run the program. After that accept the License Agreement:

Step 3: Run the Smart Test

At the end, click on the SMART option to run the test to check the status of the hard drive:

Green Status will indicate that your hard drive is working fine:

Conclusion

To assess the health of the hard drive, use multiple built-in methods for example using a Windows check disk. You can execute commands in the command prompt to check the status of the hard drive. If unable to use Windows built-in tools, there are many third-party applications that provide the hard drive deep analysis.