Skip to main content

How to See if Your Hard Drive is Dying

Hard drives use S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to gauge their own reliability and determine if they’re failing.  You can view your hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. data and see if it has started to develop problems.

Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have an easy-to-use built-in tool that shows your hard disk’s S.M.A.R.T. data.  We will need a third-party tool to view this information, though there is a way to check your S.M.A.R.T. status from the command prompt.

Use CrystalDiskInfo

CrystalDiskInfo is an easy-to-use, open-source program that can quickly display the S.M.A.R.T. status reported by your hard drive in Windows.  You can download it for free – however, be sure to uncheck the browser widget when installing it.






Once it is installed, all you have to do is launch the CrystalDiskInfo application to view the S.M.A.R.T. status information for your hard drives.  If everything is working properly, you should see the status Good displayed.
CrystalDiskInfo also displays other information about your hard drive, including its current temperature and hardware specifications.  If there is a problem, you can identify what exactly is wrong with the hard drive.



If you are particularly paranoid, you can enable the Function –> Resident (to keep CrystalDiskInfo running in your system tray) and Function –> Startup (to have CrystalDiskInfo automatically start with your computer) options to leave CrystalDiskInfo always running in the background.  If your S.M.A.R.T. status changes, CrystalDiskInfo will pop up and alert you.

Checking S.M.A.R.T. Without Third-Party Tools

To do a quick S.M.A.R.T. check without installing any third-party software, you can use a few commands included with Windows.  First, open a Command Prompt window.  (Press the Windows key, type Command Prompt, and press Enter.)
In the Command Prompt window, type the following commands, pressing Enter after each:
wmic
diskdrive get status


If everything is working properly, you should see the status OK displayed.  Other statuses can indicate problems or errors retrieving S.M.A.R.T. information.

Help, My Hard Drive Is Dying!

If you have used either of these tools – or another reputable program – and have seen an error, this does not mean your hard drive is going to fail immediately.  However, if there’s a S.M.A.R.T. error, you should assume that your hard drive is in the process of failing.  A complete failure could come in a few minutes, a few months, or – in some cases — even a few years.  However long it takes, you should not trust the hard drive with your data in the meantime.
ou really do leave it running resident in the background. It will alert you to high temperatures as well as smart errors. it is a real piece of mind.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How To Recover Passwords Using Ophcrack LiveCD

Ophcrack LiveCD 3.4.0 is a completely self contained, bootable version of Ophcrack 3.4.0 - the easiest and most effective tool that I've ever found to "crack" your forgotten Windows password. For a quick overview of Ophcrack, see my complete review of Ophcrack 3.4.0 . Ophcrack is a free software program that recovers passwords so the first step you'll need to take is to visit Ophcrack's website . When the Ophcrack website loads as shown above, click the Download ophcrack LiveCD button. Note: Since you obviously can't get into your computer right now because you don't know the password, these first four steps will need to be completed on another computer that you have access to. This other computer will need to have access to the Internet and the capability to burn a disc (like a CD, DVD, etc.). Another Note: The instructions I've put together here walk you through the entire process of using Ophcrack LiveCD to recover your password. If you...

Configuring the Linksys WRT54GS Router for wifi

Basic ADSL Router setup The full GUI can be accessed at http://ui.linksys.com/WRT54G/v1-v4/4.20.7/index.htm location  The router will work out of the box, but has none of the security functions enabled as standard. It should be connected by Cat5 or 5e ethernet cable between a modem and the computer network as its job is to manage traffic and protect the network with its built-in firewall. Configuring the WRT54GS is quite straightforward thanks to its user-friendly web interface. To access it enter; http://192.168.1.1 into your web browser. You will be prompted to enter a username and password. Enter admin for both, you will be changing this later. Router Name This image above is of the first web interface showing the basic configuration settings. Nothing needs to be changed here for most home user setups, but I suggest changing the Router Name to something meaningful and changing the Time Zone. If you have made any changes, click Save at t...

How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7

If you have an ISO image of Windows 7, using Microsoft’s free utility is a quick and easy option to get the image on your USB flash drive. It requires XP SP2 or higher and if you’re using an XP machine you’ll need .NET Framework 2.0, and Microsoft Image Mastering API V2…both of which can be downloaded from the link below. It seemed to work best if I formatted the flash drive as NTFS before using the download tool. But that could be because of the flash drive I used…your mileage may vary.   It’s a pretty straight forward process, first browse to the location of your Windows 7 ISO file and click Next. Select USB device…this also helps you burn the ISO to DVD as well if you need that option. Choose your flash drive and click Begin copying. Now just wait for the process to complete. The drive will be formatted and files copied to the flash drive. When the process is finished you will be able to see the files on the flash drive as you would if you opened the installat...