If Your Drive Is Dead (or Almost Dead) Image: Gettyĭrives with the Caution or Pred Fail status won't necessarily fail tomorrow. But for most people, CrystalDiskInfo will give you a decent ballpark recommendation for just about any drive. These tools can sometimes take into account certain technologies specific to their hard drives and SSDs. For example, Seagate has SeaTools for its drives, Western Digital has Western Digital Dashboard for its drives, and Samsung has Samsung Magician for its SSDs. If you want an even deeper, more accurate picture into your drive's health, check its manufacturer's website for a dedicated tool. So that Caution label is usually a good indicator that you should back up the drive and think about replacing it soon, even if you aren't having problems yet. But if even one of those bad sectors lands on a file you need, it can be rendered corrupt. These labels apply to hard drives and SSDs that are starting to wear down, but aren't necessarily on their deathbed (read more about how CrystalDiskInfo applies those labels here).įor example, my drive above has a few bad and reallocated sectors, and I haven't run into any issues-probably because those bad sectors weren't housing any actual data at the time. Instead of saying your drive is "OK" or "Bad," like the built-in tools do, CrystalDiskInfo and DriveDx also have more intermediary labels, like Caution or Warning, respectively. information than your computer provides on its own.
DRIVEDX FOR WINDOWS FREE
For a closer look, I recommend downloading CrystalDiskInfo for Windows (free), or DriveDx for macOS ($20 with a free trial), both of which will offer up more detailed S.M.A.R.T. You only know when your drive is near death, but you can start to experience problems even if the basic S.M.A.R.T. Status in the bottom left, which will either read Verified or Failing. On a Mac, open Disk Utility from /Applications/Utilities/, click on the drive, and look at S.M.A.R.T. It will return Pred Fail if your drive's death is imminent or OK if it thinks the drive is doing fine. Just type "cmd" into the search bar and open the application. status of your drives from the Command Prompt. In Windows, you can manually check the S.M.A.R.T. That way, your computer will automatically notify you before data loss occurs and the drive can be replaced while it still remains functional. Most modern drives have a feature called S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), which monitors different drive attributes in an attempt to detect a failing disk. That means even if your drive isn't making strange noises, you should keep an eye on its health once in a while, so you can prepare for death before it happens. Unless your drive experiences excessive heat or physical trauma, it'll probably fail gradually. Newer solid-state drives (SSDs) don't have moving parts, but their storage cells degrade a little bit every time you write to them, meaning they too will eventually fail (though SSD reliability is much better than it used to be). On older spinning drives, moving parts like the motor can degrade over time, or the drives' magnetic sectors can go bad. This is normal, especially if your drive is more than a few years old. Strange noises, corrupted files, crashing during boot, and glacial transfer speeds all point to the inevitable end. It might be time to say farewell, but here's what you should do before it goes to the big data center in the sky.Įvery hard drive dies eventually, and when it's near death, you'll see the signs. It's starting to make clicking or screeching noises, it can't seem to find your files, and it's moving really slowly. Your hard drive hasn't been acting the same lately.
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