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 sta...