You should take good care of your hard drive in that if it fails, your data will surely suffer. Also, you need to test your hard drive regularly, namely checking if it is bad or not. Now, this article will expose 6 approaches to test it.
It is known that a bad hard drive can result in all kinds of issues. For instance, if it is an internal hard drive, your computer will tend to malfunction, such as errors when reading, copying or deleting data, pretty poor PC performance, unbootable PC system and so on. If it’s an external hard drive, your data will be susceptible to damage, such as damaged PST file, etc. In a nutshell, in order to prevent terrible matters, you had better recognize the bad hard drive as soon as possible. It refers to that you ought to test your hard drive on a regular basis. As for how to test if it is bad or not, you can utilize the following means.
1. BIOS
If the hard drive is an internal one in your computer, the most essential step is to check the BIOS, as internal drive is commonly the boot one. If the hard drive does not display in BIOS as normal or the boot order in BIOS is incorrect somehow, it is necessary for you to suspect that your hard drive is suffering something wrong.
2. Disk Management
In addition to BIOS, you could check the status of hard drive in disk management. In the “Disk Management” screen, you can see if the hard drive displays in normal status. If a hard drive is shown as “unallocated”, “unknown” or others or the drive partitions go wrong, there is likelihood that something improper is occurring to the drive.
3. CHKDSK
On Windows-based computer, there is an inbuilt disk scan and fix tool – CHKDSK. Thus, you can utilize it for scanning your hard drive to see if there are any issues. You can run CHKDSK via accessing drive properties or through command prompt. For more details, you can refer to my previous artcile – “5 Vital Tips to Fix Hard Drive Issues with CHKDSK in Windows”.
4. SMART Tool
Nowadays, almost all modern hard drives support SMART tool to check the status of the drives. This tool usually includes 10 critical indications which can be used for testing a hard drive. If it detects a hard drive failure, the tool will prompt you at once. Hence, you can resort to this tool to decide if your hard drive is good or not.
5. Manufacturer Tool
In recent years, many hard drives come packed with a diagnostic tool, which is developed and supported by the manufacturers. It can catch and log a number of important drive information. If users require, it can list out the drive defects and give you the option to repair the drive. However, to be honest, it is a bit risky.
6. Third Party Tool
Moreover, with data storage industry developing constantly, increasing relevant tools emerge, such as disk repair utility and disk check tool and so on. Therefore, it is also an option for you to opt for a dependable and well-quality tool to scan and test if your hard drive is bad or not.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including mdf repair and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
Great information