Checking the health of a hard drive in Windows

slipd · 20 Oct 2013 at 09:46

Hi guys,

As above; what is there that would allow someone to deduce that their hard drive is physically damaged; failing spin up time, bad sectors etc. A friend is reporting that their hard drive is failing again having only recently been replaced by WD RMA...

I usually diagnose drives outside of Windows using a little disk utility included with Parted Magic but I haven't got time to start explaining liveCDs to people

So I'm after something that will do the same in Windows. And that's free.

Any ideas?

lurkio · 20 Oct 2013 at 11:02

defragler has the option to show up smart info on the drive in windows

But best thing to do is use hirens boot cd and use the appropriate dos diagnotostic util
for the brand of drive

wonko · 20 Oct 2013 at 11:15

Other options to run within windows are HDTune and CrystalDiskInfo. But as lurkio says, it's worth running the manufacturer's diagnostics too - WD has Data Lifeguard for windows.

LostCorpse · 20 Oct 2013 at 11:35

i'd normally use CrystalDiskInfo, it can check all the drives attached at the same time and show you were the problems might be.

Glanza · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:07

I'd download a copy of Hirens and run seagate to test it.

Randomface74 · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:08

CrystalDiskInfo

KIA · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:36

sam.wheale said:
A friend is reporting that their hard drive is failing again having only recently been replaced by WD RMA...

What makes him think this?

Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System

AtaRo · 21 Oct 2013 at 02:09

If it's a Western Digital drive then let them DL and run Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows.

Raumarik · 21 Oct 2013 at 09:22

As above.

If Windows is having issues with it you'll normally see this reflected in the event log on the computer (start > run > eventvwr)

Event IDs 7, 9 and 11 are the most common ones I've seen for this.

linktoinsanity · 21 Oct 2013 at 10:22

Event Viewer is a good shout.

Also, download and run Seatools for Windows (No it doesn't need to be a Seagate hard drive).

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/