Hdd Testing Utility Win10

[The_DADDY 3,468]

I'dike to test the health of a hard drive 

What's a good free utility that will tell me if the HDD is any go2? 

Thanks in advance 👍

[zach 234]

Windows will test it, and fix bad sectors. I tend to retire them to the drill and hammer when they start failing or have any kind of bad sectors.

 

What do you want to test? There's read/write speeds and general health.  Plus many other tests.

 

If you think Windows one is too basic. CrystalDisk may be more like what you want.

Edited September 22, 2021 by zach

[The_DADDY 3,468]

2 hours ago, zach said:

Windows will test it, and fix bad sectors. I tend to retire them to the drill and hammer when they start failing or have any kind of bad sectors.

 

What do you want to test? There's read/write speeds and general health.  Plus many other tests.

 

If you think Windows one is too basic. CrystalDisk may be more like what you want.

Thanks for your reply. Just read/write speeds and general health would do me fine. How does Windows do this and also will it test a HDD thats in a caddy connected via usb?

[zach 234]

It will do one on USB (in a caddy) 

 

Open  Windows File Explorer > Right click on the drive > Properties > Tools tab.  In that section it's  'Error Checking' that you want to run.

 

Windows will probably say it's OK, you can still run it. There are a lot more in depth testers, but start with that for now. If you want to go 'full Geek' we can move to those later if you want to. 

 

Is the drive having problems? Only reason I'm asking is that the USB side of external drives can be faulty, the actual drive might be OK.

 

EDIT: For read/write speeds, download CrystaldiskMark. It's free

 

https://crystalmark.info/en/

 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by zach

[The_DADDY 3,468]

16 hours ago, zach said:

It will do one on USB (in a caddy) 

 

Open  Windows File Explorer > Right click on the drive > Properties > Tools tab.  In that section it's  'Error Checking' that you want to run.

 

Windows will probably say it's OK, you can still run it. There are a lot more in depth testers, but start with that for now. If you want to go 'full Geek' we can move to those later if you want to. 

 

Is the drive having problems? Only reason I'm asking is that the USB side of external drives can be faulty, the actual drive might be OK.

 

EDIT: For read/write speeds, download CrystaldiskMark. It's free

 

https://crystalmark.info/en/

 

 

Thank you loads for the info Zach

I used Windows to scan the drive and it came up with no problems 

I then followed your second suggestion and installed Crystal Disk and that said "Caution" and a yellow dot next to Current Pending Sector Count. 

I've no idea what that means but the fact it says caution is enough for me to bin the hdd 

A big thank you for your help there Zach 👍

[fools 447]

That would be like throwing a car away because the engine management light came on sometime in the past, totally unnecessary.

Edited September 24, 2021 by fools

[zach 234]

Mechanical hard drives can give a lot of information. To the general user, a few signs that it's going to fail are.

 

Clicking sounds

Bad sector reports

Slow read/write speeds (very slow)

 

While it's still working, I'd back the data up, if it's important. I have one that has 400+ repaired sectors, but all the data is doubled up on a new drive. I'm just being a bit lazy swapping the bad drive in the RAID array out. It doesn't matter if it's a RAID or single drive, I'd be on my guard now, as errors usually mean it's going to fail.

 

Just now, fools said:

That would be like throwing a car away because the engine management light came on, totally unnecessary.

Not really, depending what the error is. Some bad sectors errors on a drive can go on for a long time (like mine above) but it's a warning that should be watched carefully.  I'd rather have it covered by way of a backup or another drive copy while testing what the problem is, rather than risk losing data. Throwing the entire PC away due to a drive fault might be more fitting to your comment, but I doubt the OP is going to do that!

 

It's the OPs choice on how he decides to solve the issue. If they decide to test a bit deeper, we'll try and help with that. What do you suggest?

[fools 447]

Hard disks are designed to fix themselves, by marking areas they are having difficulty with as potentially dodgy, and using spare space instead. They update the smart counters as they go (raw values in crystal). That doesn't mean they are faulty or are about to fail completely - the nature of how hard disks work, and the need for data confidence necessitates that redundancy in the design. Most disks after a few years will start racking up some smart errors, and the user won't notice a thing, the sectors are reallocated automatically without any data loss. 400 sectors is tiny.

 

Assuming anything important is backed up somewhere, If the disk wasn't showing any outward signs of failure, I'd do nothing. But they could copy the contents to another disk, then do a full format to exercise the disk fully, then copy the data back.

 

I've known organisations throw away almost brand new pc's costing 1000's, because the IT dept don't know the difference between a software fault and a hardware fault.  Similarly, a massive percentage of the PC's in the local dump site are there because the owner thinks they've gone slow because the hardware is too old, they'd be perfectly usable if they'd bothered to reinstall the operating system.

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by fools

[zach 234]

2 hours ago, fools said:

Hard disks are designed to fix themselves, by marking areas they are having difficulty with as potentially dodgy, and using spare space instead. They update the smart counters as they go (raw values in crystal). That doesn't mean they are faulty or are about to fail completely - the nature of how hard disks work, and the need for data confidence necessitates that redundancy in the design. Most disks after a few years will start racking up some smart errors, and the user won't notice a thing, the sectors are reallocated automatically without any data loss. 400 sectors is tiny.

 

Assuming anything important is backed up somewhere, If the disk wasn't showing any outward signs of failure, I'd do nothing. But they could copy the contents to another disk, then do a full format to exercise the disk fully, then copy the data back.

 

I've known organisations throw away almost brand new pc's costing 1000's, because the IT dept don't know the difference between a software fault and a hardware fault.  Similarly, a massive percentage of the PC's in the local dump site are there because the owner thinks they've gone slow because the hardware is too old, they'd be perfectly usable if they'd bothered to reinstall the operating system.

 

My typo, it was meant to say 4000+ And not an OS drive. I know that in my case, the drive is on its last legs. It's a little used server, so no great rush to fix it. The dead drive will be removed and the other 2 will be used for other things.

 

In this case we are trying to help a person that maybe doesn't have the knowledge and by way of answering a question in simple terms until we can better judge if it's a faulty drive or not, and how deep into it they can go.

 

The OP will let us know if they want any more help.

 

17 hours ago, The_DADDY said:

A big thank you for your help there Zach 👍

No problem 😉