How can I check if my hard drive is working properly?

Whether you're a private user or work within an IT department, you can sometimes face a horrifying reality – the hard drive I am using is no longer working as it should.

Unlike the usual symptoms of a loud scratching or ‘clicking’ noise, it's not always immediately clear whether a hard drive is physically defective or not. Many users find it irritating and do not know how to react; is it a one-off event or is it a recurring problem?  Hard drive failures can happen relatively quickly, especially as the average lifetime of these devices is usually only around three to five years.

If the hard drive is still responding, there are a variety of suitable diagnostic software products that individuals can use to assess the condition of the device.  The quality of tools can vary – some are relatively harmless, while others can interfere so deeply with the hardware that the hard drive (and data) can experience severe damage from the tool.

Take a Smart Approach

The most important technology used in checking a hard drive is SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology).  Almost all modern hard drives now support SMART analysis tools to check the physical condition of the media.  According to a study conducted by  Google several years ago, two out of three hard drive crashes can be predicted using such an analysis.  SMART tools include ten critical indications that can be examined within the hard drive. When a failure is detected, it can be flagged as a "Possible Indicator for an Impending Electromechanical Failure."  In addition, SMART tools cover about 30 other attributes, which can be queried and serve as indicators to predict any impending failures.  This will help you in deciding whether or not to replace your hardware in order to avoid potential data loss.

One of these possible attributes is the SSD indicator "SSD Life Left." It shows the approximate SSD remaining lifetime with respect to program/erase cycles or flash blocks that are currently available. This can come in very handy to monitor the health of your Solid-State Drives.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

It’s also often the case that users will come into contact with  SMART tools when damage has already occurred (and when it’s often too late).  For this reason, you should look to use SMART tools throughout the life of your device at regular intervals, monitoring the results periodically.  Unfortunately, most operating systems do not automatically determine the diagnosis data and present it to the user in a clear format. Instead, they have to be collected with the help of special tools.

The Truth about Windows Check Disk Tool

It's possible to start the ‘CHKDSK’ tool quickly with a right-click on the hard drive under ‘Properties > Tools > Error check’ under the Windows operating system.  However, you only want to get information about whether something is wrong or not, therefore you should make sure that you have not clicked either the "Automatic Data System Error Correction" or "Find/Restore Bad Sectors" options.  Subsequently, the tool checks the respective hard drive and delivers a report.  Just note that the tool does not list all the available information of SMART analysis, but only generally says that the storage medium is either functioning or not.

On the other hand, the detailed report from CHKDSK contains important information about whether the index entries of the hard disk are correct, as well as if the security descriptions of the data are correct and any problems with the data structures.  This is certainly important information, but only as a second step, as you first want to determine the physical condition of the hard drive and how long it will last for. This type of analysis is only possible with special SMART diagnostic tools.

A general word of warning: use CHKDSK with caution.  The incorrect use of  CHKDSK can do more harm than good and can permanently destroy data that may otherwise have been recoverable.

What Can SMART Tools Offer?

SMART tools can perform several different tests on the hard drive.  For example, there's a ‘fast SMART check’ that queries the most important indicators in the firmware of the hard drive (according to the manufacturer's definition). These indicators include bad sectors, reassigned sectors, the number of spin starts until the spindle reaches full speed (Spin Retry Counts), and many others. The most important tests are ‘Drive Self-Test (DST),’ ‘Short Test,’ and the ‘Long Test,' where every single sector of the hard drive is read. This process can take an extremely long time. Different tests provide different types of information, allowing you to build a picture of the overall health of the drive. An overview of some of the tools available can be found  here.

Know the Manufacturer's Tools

Many hard drive manufacturers embed their own diagnostic tools within their devices, which can present large quantities of important information to the user. In addition, some of the tools can change the hard drive settings; however, manufacturers usually reject any responsibility for data loss that has resulted from using their tools, so be careful!

The information provided by these supplied or downloadable tools depends on the specific producer.  They usually list defects and give the option to repair problematic sectors.  As mentioned before, using these tools is at your own risk. Here are some links to the free diagnostic tools from  Seagate,  Western Digital, Hitachi and  Fujitsu:

Utilize Commercial Diagnostic Tools

In addition, there are also a variety of commercial tools that differ widely in scope and sometimes offer different information.  What makes them interesting is that they combine different diagnostic examinations into one solution.  In addition to the SMART diagnostic checks, they usually also offer benchmark and file benchmark checks, disk monitoring and error scans, as well as power consumption and temperature checks.

Such comprehensive free tools (for personal use) are  CrystalDiskInfo,  DiskCheckup,  HD Tune, or  HDDScan.  All four tools are easy to use and inform the user about the health status of the tested hard drive within a very short time. HDDScan is the only one of these four to test RAID volumes and perform a surface test on them. With these features, the software is also suitable as a fast diagnostic tool for smaller company environments.

The  smartmontools (SMART Monitoring Tools) offer themselves for professional environments usage if you want to use an open-source solution.  They are available not only for Linux, Mac, and Windows but also for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OS / 2, Cygwin, QNX or eComStation.  In addition to individual disks, the tools also support RAID setups.

Another tool is  Speedfan.  What makes this tool unique is the possibility to display not only the health condition based on SMART and other indicators but also the predicted remaining life span. It uses an online database (called ‘in-depth online analysis’) and compares the results it obtained with previous comparable hard drives and calculates the remaining lifetime of the disk.  Make sure you’re fully aware of the program and its features before experimenting and changing all possible settings; you don’t want to end up inadvertently causing damage.

Seek Prevention Over Cure

No matter what diagnostic tool you have used, if it’s showing SMART errors, you should assume that it's in the failure state (or close). It’s also fair to assume that a complete breakdown of the device is inevitable; it may take minutes, weeks or months, but don’t risk using it anymore.

Ensure that you have backed up your data to another storage medium, such as an external hard drive, tape, or SSD.  Once all your data is backed up, you should look to replace your current drive with a new one as soon as possible.  A hard drive which does not succeed in SMART tests is not reliable!  Even if your hard drive doesn’t fail completely, it could still cause damage to parts of your data. Of course, hardware is never perfect and hard drives can fail without any warning (Ontrack's hard drive data recovery info can be found here). Nevertheless, SMART can help indicate if your hard drive might be failing soon. Some indication is better than none at all!