Except for the fans, the hard drive is practically the only piece of a modern computer that has moving parts. Although the more expensive solid state drives or SSDs can be mounted on some computers, most people have a PC with a regular hard drive inside. Hard drives are made up of rotating platters that spin all the time at speeds of 5400 or 7200 PRM (and sometimes even faster) for hours on end so they are also the part of a computer most prone to deteriorate. What ruins a hard disk, besides its continuous use, are also some accidental events such as the sudden shutdown of the PC during a load.
Not surprisingly, on Windows, when the computer shuts down or suddenly restarts, by serious mistake or because the light goes away, the scandisk starts which checks and corrects errors in lost or damaged data.
We must also consider that a hard disk is perfectly healthy can represent, even in very fast computers, a bottleneck of the system: the problem is that even having a pc with a very powerful processor and a lot of RAM memory, reading and writing files on a normal hard disk always remain very slow processes.
So let's see two free tools, among the best, to check the speed of the hard disk and its physical integrity .
1) CrystalDiskInfo is a free program to analyze all the technical information of your hard disk, using SMART internal monitoring technology
For example, you can see how long you have been using a hard disk and how many times the computer has been restarted.
All the rest of the information, even if it is written in Italian, can only be understood by those who are more experienced.
The important thing is that CrystalDisk immediately gives a judgment on the state of the hard disk by writing if it is Good or Poor as appropriate. The temperature of the hard disk is also highlighted which, if it were too high (it must never be higher than 60 degrees), could damage the disk. CrystalDisk then becomes a control program to be used occasionally to find out if physical integrity is always good or if it is degrading. Checking the hard disk is very important because, if it suddenly breaks, it becomes complicated, expensive or even impossible to recover the data stored in it.
2) To check the hard disk speed, DiskBench can be used instead.
Unlike CrystalDiskInfo, DiskBench is one of those somewhat gray and very technical tools with an interface consisting of 5 tabs.
Each card is a different type of test that can be performed on the hard drive. The most immediate is the last one, the Create file Batch which measures the speed of the hard disk when creating a new batch file. Leave all the settings as they are and read, in the test sheet, the speed in milliseconds and in MB per second. The other tests are copying a file, copying a folder, creating a file and reading a file.
3) Always to do a speed test of a hard disk or even USB sticks and memory cards you can use the HD_Speed tool.
Without installation, just run the file after extracting it and then press the Start button. From the drop-down menu you can select the disk to check which, as mentioned, can also be the USB stick connected to the PC.
In another article I had already listed other programs to check the hard disk, its health, performance and performance and you can find some alternatives such as the famous HDTune that allows you to check the speed, stability and integrity of a disk or USB stick or any other storage medium and to run recovery and error correction tools.
With Windows 8 and Windows 7 you can open a DOS command prompt and type the commands: wmic, press Enter, then write diskdrive get status and press Enter, to see the disk status is OK and the hard disk is intact.
