The computer disk is perhaps the most delicate part of a computer, the one that most quickly ruins and deteriorates. At the same time, the disk is also the most important part of the PC, because it stores all the data that we want to be kept for a long time, such as photos, documents, music and everything that is saved while using the computer.
Consequently, when the computer disk breaks, the real problem becomes not so much its replacement, not even the fact of having to reinstall Windows 10, but rather the difficult operation of recovering important files, which in some cases may also be lost forever.
For this reason, it is important to use tools to monitor the health of your computer's disk, in order to be ready and prepared to save your personal files elsewhere and change discs with a new one without waiting for the old one to completely break.
Checking the health status of your PC's disk is also helpful to get an indication of its performance and speed, so be sure it doesn't slow down your computer.
Below, therefore, we discover the best diagnostic, analysis and control programs for the PC disk, be it a hard disk ( HDD ) or an SSD drive .
Most of these tools are called " SMART " which means " Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology ".
SMART is therefore the internal technology in computer disk drives that provides information on its status, such as a reliability index that allows users to identify any failures before they can become irreversible without the possibility of recovering data.
1) HDD Scan not only includes many SMART diagnostic utilities, but also other tools for testing and optimizing the hard drive.
HDDScan is a portable hard drive test program for Windows 10 and Windows 7 that can perform various tests on all types of internal and external hard drives (SATA, SCSI, USB, FireWire or SSD)
The program is easy to use and all optional features are easily accessible.
SMART reports can be saved to an MHT or TXT file
2) Passmark Disk CheckUp is used to check the health of a hard disk and to be warned before the disk breaks.
Disk Checkup reads the SMART attributes of the disk so that, after using it for a longer period, it can have all the details of a disk drive to predict when it may be necessary to change it.
The program also supports Windows 10 as well as all previous versions and is capable of controlling SATA and HDD SCSI hard drives, external USB drives, RAID volumes, SSDs.
3) GSmartControl is an open source test program to check the health status of hard drives, USB drives and SSDs through automatic tests and control of SMART attributes.
The program is easy to use, works with various operating systems and can even run directly from a flash drive or other portable device.
SMART attributes allow you to predict certain drive failures to be notified in advance of problems.
4) HD Tune is the simplest of these programs, which offers utilities for diagnostics, benchmarking and which contains a scandisk tool very similar to the Windows scan disk, which can be run in real time, without having to restart the PC.
HD Tune also includes real-time temperature measurement.
The program is very useful for making comparisons and analyzing how your hard disk should work if it were new, supporting SSD drives, internal and external disks.
5) CrystalDiskInfo is a free utility for Windows that supports not only hard drives but also removable media, external hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks and Firewire.
This software, updated regularly several times a year, immediately gives an overall rating for all storage units connected to the computer, internal or external, and shows an incredible amount of information, from the simplest to the most advanced features and can remain always running in the background.
Among other things, it also shows the disk temperature, read and write errors and the "power management" tool.
The main view shows information on the SMART status of the hard disks and, if everything works correctly, you will see the word " Good " written, otherwise you can read warnings of caution or bad status.
6) HDD Guardian is an open source program that warns you if a hard disk is breaking or if it is overheating or if the vital parameters of the disk have been changed.
The tool provides instant overview of hard drive health and tells if disk error checking should be done.
The information available also includes other important details, such as the manufacturer's name, serial number, firmware version and disk space.
You can start a SMART test to see if the hard drive is working well or if it contains errors.
7) HDD Health is a program similar to the previous ones that indicates temperature measurement and real-time monitoring, including a health indicator measured with a simple percentage and nothing more.
It includes the same advanced diagnostic tools and "SMART" tools.
8) Acronis Drive monitor allows you to know when a hard disk is to be replaced .
9) HDD Expert is a free program, also in a portable version, to check the status of the disks of a Windows PC, their temperature, power cycles and operating hours.
The program also offers suggestions on how to improve the situation, in case of problems it suggests to create a backup copy and, for example, if the temperature reaches critical levels, to consider adding fans.
10) Easis Drive Check is a small tool to test the disk and check SMART values and the various sectors.
The two tests can both be performed together to have an overall result on the state of health.
11) Windows scandisk or checkdisk for disk error checking is an integrated tool that can work to perform a sector test and correct any errors of corrupt or discarded files.
12) Ariolic Disk Scanner is a simple, free and portable utility that allows you to check your hard drive for read errors, which is like scandisk.
It shows the disk clusters graphically and colors them green if there are no problems, red if there are errors.
13) Seagate / Maxtor has a suite called Seatools which includes a series of specific tools for Windows that can quickly and completely determine the current status of the Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.
All the tools listed above may or may not be able to resolve errors on the hard disk, but they are very useful, if you are concerned about the performance of the hard disk and the current state of the hard disk, to have confirmations or denials.
In case you notice problems, you can do so with a full disk backup before it's too late.
To check the health status of the hard disk without using external programs and directly from Windows 7 or Windows 10 and 8 you can use the WMIC or Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line from the command line.
WMIC is a command line interface that simplifies the use of Windows Management Instrumentation ( WMI ).
Put simply there is a command to check if the computer disk is still fine or if it is time to change it.
Open a command prompt window (from the Start menu), type the wmic command and press Enter.
Then type diskdrive get status and press Enter.
If the status of the hard drive is OK, the OK message will be displayed.
What to do if the tests reveal bad health, degraded performance and possible disk damage "> what to do if the computer disk is broken or damaged and also how to recover files from a broken disk .
To top it off, I remember other types of programs for
- see graphically the space used on the disk .
- Programs to optimize SSDs (Samsung and others) and manage solid state drives
