{"id":130,"date":"2017-08-28T09:24:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T09:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2017-08-28T09:24:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-28T09:24:57","slug":"methods-to-check-hard-drive-for-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/methods-to-check-hard-drive-for-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Methods to Check Hard Drive for Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-132\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"527\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic1.png 527w, https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic1-300x141.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 527px) 85vw, 527px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Your computer\u2019s hard drive holds all the important data and losing it to a hard disk failure can be distressing. Hard disks; unfortunately, have a limited lifespan and it will get damaged or corrupted sooner or later. In this article, you\u2019ll know some of the possible causes and different free tools to check your hard drive for failure or errors so that you can appropriate measures before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problems You Might Encounter<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Computer is extremely slow<\/li>\n<li>Windows OS unable to boot<\/li>\n<li>Computer reboot or some random errors<\/li>\n<li>Errors while copying, reading, deleting, or moving data on the PC.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Below are the some of the tools that can be used to test your PC\u2019s hard drive for failures and errors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scandisk<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scandisk is an inbuilt Windows tool that scans the drive for bad sectors or system errors and reports if there are any issues with your hard disk. It performs both scanning and fixing the issues, it can and also reports the bigger issues that it cannot repair. So, you can use this utility to check hard disk health and also fix bad sectors and other errors if any.<\/p>\n<p>To run Scandisk, right click the drive which you want to check for errors, and choose <strong>\u201cProperties\u201d<\/strong> from the context menu. Next, click <strong>Tools<\/strong> tab and then click <strong>Check <\/strong>button.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-131\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"358\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic2.png 365w, https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/pic2-300x271.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 358px) 85vw, 358px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A window will pop up with two options \u2013 to fix file system errors and scan for bad sectors. Choose either one or both the options if you want to repair the errors and bad sectors and click <strong>Start<\/strong> button.<\/p>\n<p>This is a very basic tool which concentrates on finding bad sectors and system errors. It just lets you know if there are any major issues and nothing more. Thus, you can use this as a basic hard drive checking and repair utility.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CHKDSK<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Another Windows inbuilt utility, Command Prompt Check Disk. To launch chkdsk on Windows 10, type <strong>cmd<\/strong> in the search box, and right click Command Prompt from the search results and select R<strong>un as administrator<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In the Command Prompt windows, type <strong>chkdsk X:\/f <\/strong>and hit <strong>Enter. <\/strong>Replace X with the actual drive letter, which you want to check.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WMIC<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is another command line interface, which allows you to perform numerous administrative tasks which include checking hard drives for error. It uses S.M.A.R.T feature (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) of the hard disk to check the status and give a simple decision like <strong>Pred Fail<\/strong> or <strong>OK<\/strong>, etc.<\/p>\n<p>To check the health of the hard disk in WMIC, go to Command Prompt by following above-mentioned steps and type <strong>wmic <\/strong>and press <strong>Enter. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now, type <strong>disk drive get status <\/strong>and press <strong>Enter<\/strong> again. After some time, you\u2019ll see the status of the hard disk.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Seagate SeaTools <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is a free and open source tool, used to check the hard drive for failures and errors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Replacing The Hard Disk<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If your hard disk is producing SMART errors or turning bad even after performing the above-mentioned health check-ups, it is better to replace the hard drive. If you are worried about the retrieving the lost data, use a Windows <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/windows\/recover-hard-drive-without-formatting.html\">Hard Drive Recovery Tool<\/a> which recovers data without formatting the drive and without altering the content. The tool even creates the disk image from which you can recover the data at a later time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your computer\u2019s hard drive holds all the important data and losing it to a hard disk failure can be distressing. Hard disks; unfortunately, have a limited lifespan and it will get damaged or corrupted sooner or later. In this article, you\u2019ll know some of the possible causes and different free tools to check your hard &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/methods-to-check-hard-drive-for-failures\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Methods to Check Hard Drive for Failures&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hi5software.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}