The program checks the hard drive for bad sectors. Standard verification tools. Hard drive diagnostics: programs for testing HDDs for bad sectors

aass, didn't use it. But I note that Victoria and MHDD are proven tools for serious diagnostics.

And Windows 7 can track SMART information. It will warn you if anything happens.

aass

Vadim Sterkin, Thanks for the answer and for the topic!
I agree with the assessment of the Victoria and MHDD programs, I myself use Victoria for serious diagnostics, but I try to test other programs, everything is learned by comparison.)

Dmitriy

When checking the hard drive with a standard program on Windows 7, it says that bad clusters were detected in null.sys... what kind of driver is this?

Dmitriy

Vadim Sterkin,

thanks...can it cause the system to slow down?

Sanyok

Hello.
I ran (hypothetically) checking the C: drive from the graphical interface with parameters similar to your screenshot. Clicked the "Schedule disk check" button. Changed my mind. How can I cancel this one-time system disk check before rebooting the system?
I myself assume that it may be entered into the Task Scheduler.” But I want to know for sure. I see no point in experimenting. Since, after such a check was completed successfully once (in practical reality), it would be entered into the “Scheduler” even as a one-time check, and should, in theory, be saved. After all, tasks from the “Scheduler” do not have the ability to self-delete (I think so). But I didn’t find any traces in the “Planner”. As you probably know, I didn’t receive an answer on the Internet or on the forum.

Simply put, I want to know where this mythical “Check Schedule” is located and what methods and methods Windows 7 offers for adjusting it. And then it turns out like this - click, and ala-ulu...

Sanyok

Yeah…
There were graphics, but they all came out. This is some kind of graffiti, black and white, with a register. Just like Battleship Potemkin.
(Yes, I Googled, but really for a slightly different request). Thank you.
You can plan this by checking two boxes in the chart, and canceling by going to the register. They got smart here. Well, okay, there’s nothing to do - I’ll post in the forum.

Yes, by the way, does it make sense to check the second (bottom) checkbox if the system is on an SSD? After all, as far as my knowledge is sufficient, the SSD controller itself periodically (when idle) scans the memory for faulty cells.
And this second checkbox, by definition, is intended to check for broken cells on the surface of the HDD.

Sanyok

Sanyok,

You turn on your TV with the remote control and set the wake-up timer. The next morning you wake up to the music of your favorite music channel. And life flows smoothly and measuredly. But at one fine moment it dawns on you - after all, tomorrow is Sunday. No problem, you tell yourself. With a slight movement of your hand and a screwdriver, without unplugging the TV from the mains, you remove the back cover, quickly replace a couple of resistors on the board and you’re done. Tomorrow you can sleep peacefully until lunchtime.
Do you feel what I mean?

Vadim Sterkin: Sanya, what do you mean, smart? You don’t have to split hairs by pressing all sorts of strange buttons, and everything will be fine :)

It's really funny, but also of course, of course Truth.
Yes, but it’s not quite out of place. I don’t see anything unpredictable or completely incomprehensible in checking the disk. And the conversation was about the fact that if you have already provided a graphical opportunity to schedule such a task, then be kind enough to provide the same opportunity to disable it, and not through one place (the registry). Either remove graphics when planning (do planning only through CMD), or provide the ability to disable this task using the graphical interface. As an engineer, in my technical practice and in the practice of interfaces of various industrial programs and IT, this is the first time I have come across something like this. Yes, and in Windows OS too.
That’s what I wanted to convey when I said, “We’ve been clever.”
When faced with a question, I noticed that this function causes complaints from the user in terms of frequent independent launches. But let's not talk about that. As unrelated to the topic.
And of course, thanks for the comments. Everything is clear to me here.

Regarding the bottom daw:

To perform a thorough disk scan, select the Scan and repair bad sectors option. In this mode, the scanning program attempts to find and correct physical errors on the hard drive itself, which may take much longer.

It doesn't say anything about the file system. More about physical disabilities. Some of us are wrong. Or I didn't understand something.
And further in the text:

To check for both file and physical errors, select both options: Automatically fix system errors and Scan for and repair bad sectors.

Please comment. I would like clarity on the issue.
So as not to press “all sorts of strange buttons”, and everything was fine. :-)

Vyacheslav

I am very surprised by the capabilities of checking and restoring a disk under Windows 8. Changing the partition size upward using Acronis Disk Director 11 ended with errors. I wanted to increase the size of the system disk using the empty space on the adjacent partition by 200 GB. As a result, this program reports that everything is OK, and the disk size in Explorer has not changed. I checked the disk using the OS - it said that there were errors and needed to be rebooted. After the reboot, nothing changed and a request appeared to reboot to fix it. As you can already guess, this also did not help. As a result, we have lost 200 GB, despite the fact that Acronis says everything is ok, but the system is not able to correct the errors found. Sadness. Do I need to format it?

Vyacheslav

Vadim Sterkin,

In fact, under Windows 7, a similar operation was always performed without problems. I always perform the task of expanding/narrowing a partition in 2 stages: first, we cut off a piece of space from the partition being compressed and transfer it to the “unallocated space” status from the required end of the partition, and then we expand another partition using this space (I do everything manually in 2 reboots in case of “jambs”, because Acronis performs a group of operations very strangely. There is a sad experience under Windows XP). So, if under Windows 7, after checking the disk, everything returned to normal and the free space did not disappear so easily, then under Windows 8 Acronis completed the first stage successfully, and when performing the second it broke down with errors, although then it reports that “everything is fine.” The problem was eventually resolved by booting from a Live CD from Acronis. It's a pity that this cannot be done under Windows 8. And I was counting so much on the “improved checking and correction of file system errors” promoted in the media. Of course, it is very difficult to trust that checking and background diagnostics of FS problems is working correctly. It is very confusing that the time to scan one partition under Windows 7 and under Windows 8 differs by orders of magnitude, for the better for the latter. Are all problems really so easily and quickly fixed? Maybe Windows 8 simply doesn’t notice most of them, or even worse, ignores them?

Vyacheslav

Vadim Sterkin,

Well, what option is there in Windows 8 to expand the partition size? I saw the Disk Management snap-in. Well, I didn’t see how it’s possible to cut the size of a logical volume from the desired end using “standard means”. There's also no way to move a partition within the unallocated space. If there is an analogue that I missed, tell me. Along the way, you did not quite correctly understand what I meant by the phrase “I had a bad experience under Windows XP.” And it was like this: after a reboot, this operation was performed and at that moment the electricity went out. Thus, I lost 2 partitions, although, in theory, there could have been 3 options: the second partition would have been lost, from which space was taken due to the incompleteness of the operation of moving NTFS service zones, or only the system partition would have been lost (although this is unlikely), or both partitions would be fine, and between them there would be some area of unmarked space. But I was very “lucky”. Let’s skip the topic of uninterruptible power supplies and it turns out that Acronis is a respected company, and their products are sometimes dangerous to use in any way in the absence of alternatives from the OS. And then another “surprise” emerged. And even here everything is in order with the power supply. But as I already noted, the last problem was solved by booting from a Live CD from Acronis and a classic disk check, and not the over-optimized one from Windows 8, the benefits of which I have not yet felt. It seems to be there, but there seems to be no point. Or maybe I was using the disk check tool wrong. Unfortunately, this “optimization” still raises more questions and mistrust in me than answers.

Vyacheslav

Vadim Sterkin,

Irina

Conducted Windows hard drive diagnostics (chkdsk). There were no messages, but later it turned out that there was no free space. Although before the check, less than 50% of the disk was full. And now it shows 931 GB occupied. Was all the free space wasted? The disc is six months old.

I forgot to say, after that I checked with Victoria and reported that there weren’t even any errors.

Irina

This is not the case for me. We are not talking about the system disk. And about the external drive. I already found out that the system marked all the free space as bad blocks. Now I’m trying to figure out whether it’s a failure or whether the screw has died.

Sergey

Vadim, I have the following problem: After running the chkdsk disk check utility, if both “daws” are checked, it asks to reboot and the check is performed, I don’t know what to call it, but it looks like MS-DOS - lines run quickly on a black background. After the next reboot, I look at the information in the Windows Logs - Application, text in English, “there are many letters,” but the meaning can be understood from a single sentence: “Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.” At the same time, a few lines above I was kindly informed that, they say, “Cleaning up 31 unused security descriptors.” Sometimes it is not “31 unused security descriptors” that are cleared, but more or, conversely, less. That is, something is still not quite right, and the program corrects it a little. Like, overall everything is fine, but the Bug died. So, no matter how many times I run this chkdsk, it requires a reboot to correct these errors, nothing else is detected. Previously, on another machine in Windows XP this happened rarely, but now it happens time after time.
The SSD drive is about a quarter occupied. The system is legal Windows 7 x64 Professional and is automatically updated. If you don’t run disk check, then there is no reason to worry, everything works fine, doesn’t glitch or crash. So, in connection with this, the question is - maybe there is no need to spoil your mood. I didn’t find a solution to the problem of these file system errors on the Microsoft website, and are they really errors?

far_town2 Kulyasov

Are there any methods to check if the power supply has enough power? And can freezes/errors occur in games due to its insufficient power?

Hello friends. Checking the hard drive or how to check a hard drive for errors and bad sectors, we will talk about this in detail today.

In the previous article I showed. Today you will learn about programs for testing hard drives and other storage media. At the end of the review I posted a short video tutorial.

Checking our disk

It is useful for anyone who has a computer to know about the status of the hard drive or drives, if there are several of them. After all, the hard drive stores information that is important for some, and not so important for others. So, in order not to lose it, I recommend making backup copies at least once a month.

You can purchase a portable disk or flash drive to store important information, or you can use regular CDs and DVDs. If you don’t know how to save information on optical plastic discs, then I recommend reading.

You can test computer disks in different ways and with special programs. In this article we will look at:

Checking the disk using Windows 7
Useful Victoria v4.3
HDDScan program
Ashampoo HDD Control 2

There are, of course, many other useful and worthy programs and utilities, but in this publication we will only talk about these 4 methods.

How to check your hard drive using Windows 7

Any hard drive or flash drive can be checked for functionality using Windows tools. I wrote more about this here. Here is a simple algorithm for the necessary actions.

Go to My Computer, select the desired hard drive or flash drive, right-click on it and go to Properties.

Check the boxes you need or all and click Start.

This procedure can take a long time, everything will depend on the size of the storage medium that you want to check for errors and bad sectors.

Checking the disk with Victoria program

Victoria one of the main programs that I personally use to check the hard drive through Windows, or if the operating system does not start at all, then through a boot disk with this utility.

After downloading Victoria version 4.3, you need to go into the archive, unpack it or run the file with a green cross called Victoria43.

Let's launch the program, it's in English, if you don't know this language, don't be alarmed, I'll help you figure it out.

The Standard window describes the main characteristics of the storage medium: its model, serial number, disk size, how many cylinders, sectors it has, and so on.

In the Smart tab you can view the status of the hard drive. Click on the Get Smart button and look at the indicators that appear. Since my hard drive is new, my indicators are normal, SMART status = Good. You may have different meaning and information.

Smart is a technology of analysis, self-control and reporting. Using it, you can view and evaluate the condition of the hard drive, its built-in self-diagnostic equipment, and also predict the possible time of its failure.

To test the storage media, go to the Test tab and click on the Start button. If you have a lot of green, orange, red and blue rectangles (sectors), this is not good. Ideally, all sectors should be light gray and grey.

If you have damaged sectors marked “Err X”, then after completing the test, check the box next to the word Remap and run the test again. The Victoria program will try to restore these sectors and fix errors on the hard drive.

Checking the hard drive may take a long time, so be patient, it all depends on the amount of information on the media. In the meantime, testing is underway, I recommend reading the article on how to set up your computer yourself or.

Checking the hard drive using HDDScan

HDDScan is a program for diagnosing and testing hard drives in English.

After downloading, you need to run the file called HDDScan.

Select the desired Select Drive device; on the right there will be basic information about it.

Click on the blue round button and select the desired action. Go to Surfase Test - select and run the test.

Check the boxes next to Verify or Read and click the Add Test button. I do not recommend choosing Erase - it erases data.

Once you click add a test, it will start automatically and will appear in the lower Test Manager window.

Double-click on RD-Read, go to the test that has started and look at its process, you can see it on the Graph.

View on Map. At the top there are navigation buttons for controlling the Pause, Stop and Report test process, cluster and testing speed in KB/s, and on the right is the sector scanning time in numbers from< 5 до >500 milliseconds.

In the third column of Report you can see the scanned clusters and sectors of the storage medium, and at the very bottom the progress of the test process is shown as a percentage.

Upon completion of the test, a corresponding message will appear in the task manager window.

If for some reason you did not like the first three methods, then I suggest for your reference a powerful and useful utility for diagnosing hard drives and storage media from Ashampoo.

Cool program Ashampoo HDD Control 2

I have already worked with this utility for diagnosing and monitoring hard drives from Ashampoo. I really liked this program, so I decided to mention it in this article.

After you download and install Ashampoo HDD Control 2. Depending on the language pack, the program can be in either Russian or English.

It has a simple and accessible interface that anyone can understand.

Here you can see probably almost all the information about a hard drive or flash drive that you want: model, partitions, size, condition, performance, temperature and much other useful information.

This program has extensive capabilities and many settings; at the top there are seven navigation tabs:

Control
Defragmentation
Testing
Disk Cleanup
Removing Internet Traces
Deleted files
Content Analysis

You can browse through all seven tabs and explore useful information.

We are interested in checking the hard drive, go to the Testing tab, click Scan hard drives, select the one you need and click on the magnifying glass that says Start. This test can measure the speed of your hard drive.

In order to check the surface of the disk, you need to return to the Control tab and click Surface Test.

After this, the Hard Disk Surface Testing window will appear, in which there are symbols: blue square - not yet tested, green - excellent, red (already bad) - at least one bad sector.

The scanning time will again depend on the capacity and speed of the hard drive or flash drive.

In custody

Today we discussed in detail the topic of checking a hard drive or how to check a hard drive for errors and bad sectors. To do this, we used four methods: standard Windows tools, useful Victoria, the HDDScan utility and the cool Ashampoo HDD Control 2 program.

Now let's watch a short video tutorial on how to check your hard drive.

Checking the hard drive | website

You may have questions related to checking your hard drive. You can ask them below in the comments to this article, and also use the form with me.

Thank you for reading me on

The data structure on the hard disk may be damaged. This happens for various reasons, but the most common are: program crashes and freezes while writing to disk.

A slightly damaged disk, in general, will not lose its functionality, but over time, if there are more faults, it may lose its functionality.

And it’s also important that the surface of the disk can be susceptible to various defects - some area can no longer be read, and as a result, all the accumulated information can disappear in an instant. If this is the case, it is necessary to act and take measures.

Program for checking your hard drive - HDD Scan

HDD Scan is a very convenient tool that allows you to test your hard drive and also make a statistical report on the work done.

Since the application does not require installation, the Windows registry keys remain untouched. You can also place HDD Scan on an external device and directly run it on any computer.

The main advantages of the HDD Scan program:

Control over the noise characteristics of the hard drive;
Stopping and starting the spindle motor;
Information about S.M.A.R.T.;
Three modes for checking the disk surface: Verify, Read, Erase.

On the popular website Softpedia, this utility received 5 out of 5 stars, which is a “bold” plus of the program.

http://www.softportal.com/get-4740-hddscan.html

A few words about the interface HDD Scan programs.

After we unpack the archive with the program and run the HDDScan.exe application, the utility will automatically determine what model our hard drive has, serial number, LBA (number of available physical sectors) and Firmware (firmware version):

In the drop-down menu, which is located in the Select Drive section, select the hard drive with which the program will work.

There are only two buttons in this program: this is the S.M.A.R.T. button. In short and clearly, SMART is a technology for assessing the condition of a hard drive, as well as a mechanism for predicting the likelihood of hard drive failure:

So, when I clicked this button, the utility produced the following:

Let's describe the columns of this table:

Num - attribute number.
Attribute name — attribute name.
Value—attribute value. This value ranges from 1 to 255. The higher the attribute value, the better.
Worst - shows the worst attribute value (low) for the entire existence of the hard drive.
RAW(hex) is a hexadecimal number system (the exception is temperature, since the program indicates it in degrees Celsius).
Treshold—threshold or acceptable value of the attribute. Used to compare with the Value attribute.

Now let's move on to the color scheme, which means green and others:

Green color is an attribute in normal state.
Yellow color (or as in my picture - an exclamation mark) - the attribute is deviated from the norm.
Red color - the attribute is strongly deviated from the normal state.

As you can see, my 199th attribute is deviated from the norm. But what does the attribute name: UltraDMA CRC Errors mean?

On a data recovery website, I found the following information: UltraDMA CRC Errors are an error in transmitting information in a mode such as UDMA.

As it turns out, this problem can be fixed. It’s just that my interface cable may be twisted unsightly, as shown in the picture below:

The program has one more button that will help us carry out a complete test of the hard drive:

For example, you can find out the temperature of your hard drive by simply clicking on Temperature Monitor. Then an entry will appear in the Test Manager tab, clicking on which will display a widget with the temperature of the hard drive. We can even change the intensity of the color scheme by adding or diluting it with transparency:

At any time, any of the tasks can be stopped or deleted. To do this, we right-click on the desired task and select the required item:

Now you can get down to more serious things. Let's check the surface of the disk.

These test options are found in the Surface Tests section.

Start LBA and End LBA are the sectors from which the scan begins and stops. If you need to check the entire hard drive, this parameter does not need to be changed.

Command - a choice similar to checking the hard drive (Verify - verification, Read - reading sectors, and Erase - writing zeros to all sectors). Selecting an option such as Erase results in the complete loss of all recorded data on the disk! So be very careful!

Start and Stop - start and stop the scan.

Block size — number of sectors in one block. At the very beginning - 256 sectors (it is not recommended to change the value).

When checking a disk, the past time (Process time), the current sector, called Current LBA, and the read speed (Kbytes/s) are always indicated.

If we go to Map, we will find a map of our disk. The most important thing is the colors of the blocks. The blue square shows bad sectors. Also on the right side we will find the number of sectors with access time from 500 to 5 milliseconds. The fewer slowing squares found, the better.

By the way, if we turn off the Disable map dynamic update checkbox, then checking the sectors will be available to us in real time:

To summarize, we can say that HDD Scan is a very powerful and at the same time simple program for checking your hard drive.

2. Ashampoo HDD Control 2

This is an excellent utility that will tell you all the intricacies of the hard drive in a simpler user interface. The only significant drawback is that the program is paid.

Main advantages Ashampoo HDD Control 2 programs:

Constant monitoring of the hard drive (or drives);
The user interface has been expanded. Tips and information about the health, performance and temperature of the hard drive;
Support for external USB and solid-state drives (SSD) has been significantly expanded;
Supports SMART;
Adjusts the noise level and manages the energy consumption of the hard drive (however, if this function is supported on the hard drive);
Recovering deleted data;
Fully automated hard drive defragmentation;
Online search for results obtained as a result of testing your hard drive model.

You can download the program here: http://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/dld/0165/Ashampoo-HDD-Control-2/

3.Crystal DiskInfo

Another program for checking your hard drive. The program interface is more user-friendly compared to HDD Scan, but there are no advanced settings or additional testing tools. It is perfect for ordinary users. Because blue and white will tell you about the condition of the hard drive. This will happen immediately after installing and launching the program.

You can download the program here: http://www.softportal.com/get-6420-crystaldiskinfo.html

As you can see, the choice of software for servicing hard drives is very rich. Here I have considered only those that I counted the best programs to check your hard drive to date. Read, test and choose the best one.

Many PC users hardly think about checking the status of their HDD. Checking the hard drive is, first of all, necessary for early detection of errors in it.
If you manage to identify problems with your hard drive in advance, you will be able to save all the important information stored on it until it finally fails.
In this material, we will describe, using specific examples, the procedure for checking the status of the HDD, and also tell you what to do in a situation if your hard drive is faulty.

How to check the status of your hard drive

You can check the status of your hard drive using various utilities that read the status of your hard drive from its self-diagnosis system SMART. SMART technology is now installed on every hard drive produced. SMART technology was developed back in 1992 and is still being improved to this day. The main goal of SMART is logging the hard drive aging process. That is, information such as the number of HDD starts, the number of spindle rotations and many others is collected. More SMART keeps track of errors"screw", both software and mechanical and, to the extent possible corrects them. During the monitoring process, SMART performs various short and long tests to identify those same faults. In this material we will look at such programs that can read information from SMART:

Ashampoo HDD Control 3;
Defraggler;
HDDlife;
Victoria.

Each program on the list, in addition to reading SMART readings, offers a number of functions and tests that, to one degree or another, extend the life of the hard drive. But the most interesting is the program Victoria. The Victoria program, in addition to determining the HDD state, can also produce REMAP of bad sectors. That is, she can hide bad sectors by replacing them with spare ones, if available. Essentially, the REMAP procedure can completely restore the hard drive. It is also worth noting the possibility of fixing the hard drive thanks to the console application “ chkdsk" The console program "chkdsk" can fix file system errors, which will allow you to avoid reinstalling Windows.

Ashampoo HDD Control 3

First we will look at the program Ashampoo HDD Control 3. Let's run this utility on a computer running Windows 10.

The Ashampoo HDD Control 3 window displays the message “ ✓ OK", as well as the inscription " This hard drive has no problems" This information means that the hard drive in question is in perfect order. If when opening the program you see the message “ Error", as well as the inscription " This hard drive has a problem", this means that it has bad sectors or is overheating. To view complete information about the health of the “screw” taken from the smart, you need to click on the footnote “” located in the central block.

In addition to viewing information from the smart device, Ashampoo HDD Control 3 can launch self test S.M.A.R.T. And surface inspection test. You can test these tests in the "" block.

By performing these tests, you can also identify problems with the HDD. In addition to taking readings from smart devices and tests, Ashampoo HDD Control 3 can:

Perform defragmentation;
Clean the system of debris;
Find and delete duplicate files;
Securely erase files from the HDD, without the possibility of recovery.

The presence of such functionality of Ashampoo HDD Control 3 in monitoring the health of the drive and additional functions puts the utility in first place.

Defraggler

Utility Defraggler primarily intended for defragmentation, but besides this she can read SMART readings. The utility is free and any user can download it from the website www.piriform.com. After launching the utility, you need to go to the “ State».

In the window you can see that the utility displays a message about the status of the screw, like “ GOOD" - this means that he is completely fine. If you see the message " Error" in status, this will mean that the hard drive has bad sectors and it’s time to change it. The utility is quite simple and is suitable primarily for novice PC users who want to monitor the health of the HDD and defragment it. I would also like to note that the utility supports all current operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10.

How to check your hard drive using HDDlife

Utility HDDlife It has a nice interface and immediately gives us the information we need, which is responsible for the serviceability and breakdown of the screw.

From the image above you can see that in the health block there is " OK!", which means that everything is fine with the HDD. To view smart details, you just need to click on the link “ click to view S.M.A.R.T. attributes».

If you see a message in the health block " DANGER!", this means that your HDD will soon become unusable.

In this case, you need to replace the old hard drive with a new one. The HDDlife utility is, first of all, suitable for novice PC users, since its simplicity will make it easy to monitor the health of the “screw”. In addition to the standard utility, the developer also releases HDDlife for Notebooks, which is designed for laptops. The laptop version has the same functionality as the standard version, but can also perform HDD noise level control. It is also worth noting that the program supports all current operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10.

Victoria

Program Victoria is being developed in a version for DOS and by Windows. For our example, we will use the Windows version of Victoria, which can be downloaded from http://hdd-911.com. Victoria is currently available in version 4.47. By launching the Victoria utility, we will be taken to such a window.

Victoria does not have a beautiful interface, as in previous utilities and is written in such old languages as Delphi And Assembler.

In the first tab of the quiz " Standard"is all information about installed hard drives to the computer.

Second tab " SMART» needed for smart reading. To display smart results, you must click the Get SMART button, after which the results will be displayed.

In the hard drive in question, Victoria discovered 1212 bad sectors. This number of BAD sectors is critical, so in this case it is necessary to full backup all data from the HDD. To repair a hard drive using the REMAP test in Victoria, you need to go to the “ Tests" and select the mode " Remap" After these steps, you can begin the procedure of reassigning bad sectors to backup ones with the Start button.

The REMAP test in Victoria can take a very long time. The test time depends on the number of BAD sectors. This test of the Victoria utility does not always help, since there may not be any spare sectors left in the screw.

Please note that using Victoria tests, you can damage the serviceability of the HDD and the information on it.

How to check if a disk is healthy using “chkdsk”

It may happen that by checking the S.M.A.R.T. values. Using the utilities described above, you did not find any problems, but the system still behaves unstable. Instability can manifest itself as blue screens of death and freezes in programs. This behavior of the Windows operating system is caused by file system errors. In this case, the console command “ chkdsk" By running the "chkdsk" command, you can fully restore functionality Windows OS. For this example, we will take a computer with the new Windows 10 operating system. First of all, we will open the console in Windows 10 as an administrator. This can be easily done by right-clicking on the “ Start» and selecting the item we need.

In the running console, execute the following command CHKDSK F: /F /R After checking using the command application “chkdsk”, the result of the check will be displayed in the console.

Now let's look at the command " CHKDSK F: /F /R» more details. Immediately after the command “chkdsk” comes the letter “ F" - this letter local disk, where we correct errors. Keys " /F" And " /R» fix errors in the file system, and fix bad sectors. These keys are almost always used, unlike the others. You can view the remaining keys with the command chkdsk /?

It is also worth noting that in Windows 10 the capabilities of the chkdsk application have been significantly expanded thanks to new keys.

How to check your hard drive's health using DST

Abbreviation DST deciphered Disk Self Test, that is self test disk. Manufacturers specifically integrate this method into the HDD, so that later, using special software, they can perform DST self-diagnosis, which will identify problems. By testing the “screw” using DST you can get information about possible hard drive failure. It is especially convenient to use DST on servers and computers of enterprises, where reliable storage of information plays an important role. Now let's look at using DST using HP laptops as an example. For new HP laptops with support UEFI BIOS There is a special diagnostic menu " Startup Menu" This menu is launched using combination of power key and key ESC.

To run system tests, press the F2 button.

In the window that appears, DST is called Hard Disk Test. After selecting it, a self-test will start.

Other manufacturers also have a DST method, only the launch on a PC from other manufacturers differs from the one discussed above.

Checking your hard drive in Linux

For example, let's take a computer based on the Ubuntu 16.04 operating system. To do this, let's launch a terminal in Ubuntu. In the terminal, type the following command: sudo apt-get install smartmontools This command should install console utility Smartmontools.

Now that the Smartmontools utility is installed, you can use the command sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda which will display all the information of the smart hard drive in the console.

If you don't like working in console mode, you can install a graphical utility Gnome-disk-utility. In it you can see everything you need about the HDD and its condition.

Let's sum it up

In this article, we described how you can monitor the status of the HDD, as well as how to fix its sectors and file system, if possible. From the material it becomes clear that monitoring the status of hard drives is very important, as it allows anticipate HDD failure.

If you have discovered that your hard drive is problematic, then do not put off replacing it until later. The problematic “screw” can fail at any moment, and you will lose all the information stored on the computer.

We hope our material will be useful to our readers and will completely help solve the problem of checking a hard drive.

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All modern homes have a desktop computer or laptop. Some people need it for games, others for work or study. In any case, photographs, some important records, contact details of people, necessary addresses, etc. are stored on the computer. And the place where all this information is stored is a hard drive.

It is not without reason that experienced programmers say that in a situation where a computer has a hard drive error, formatting it is a real disaster. After all, formatting is fraught with the loss of all information. But this is the case if appropriate measures are not taken. But if you notice some errors and malfunctions in the disk in time and correct them, then you can avoid this global catastrophe

The main causes of HDD problems are “bad” sectors – sections of disk space that are somehow damaged.

They are divided into physical and logical. The latter appear due to software errors and can be corrected, while physical ones cannot be corrected. In the latter case, you will have to replace the hard drive.

Such damaged areas can appear on both magnetic and standard SSD drives.

Causes of bad sectors and errors

Hard drive failures depend on the type of damaged areas:

brain teaser“broken” - displayed when there is malware or viruses, as well as when there is a sudden loss of power or power cable during recording;
physical“broken” - found on a completely new product. Then you need to contact the manufacturer with a request to replace the product.

In magnetic drives, “broken” sectors can appear as a result of wear of the moving parts of the device, when foreign bodies get into the disk mechanism, or from a simple fall on the floor. In the latter case, the magnetic head of the disk is scratched, which leads to errors.

SSD drives give errors because they have tried to write any information to them many times.

It is quite possible to check the hard drive for “broken” sectors. Windows has an application called "chkdsk" (check disks). You need to open the folder on your desktop or in the Start menu "My computer" by clicking on the drive to be scanned. Using the context menu, select “Properties” - “Service”. Under the phrase “Check” there will be a button, by clicking on which you will be able to see the number of “broken” sectors.

During the test, the computer will eliminate errors in logical “broken” sectors, as well as mark areas with physical damage.

Attention! You can run the scan system manually, but if Windows independently detects “bad” sectors, the utility will launch itself when the system starts.

Checking utilities

Some software does not have built-in verification. For such cases, there are special programs that help identify “broken” sectors and errors and, if possible, correct them.

"Victoria"

It is a popular software for searching damaged areas. In addition to various methods of analyzing and reassigning problem areas, it has a function for searching for damaged contacts in a cable, as well as a function for assessing the performance of the hard drive. The only “disadvantage” of the program is the lack of official assemblies. Therefore, experts recommend using it separately from the OS.

"HDD Regenerator"

This utility uses its own methods to restore “bad” sectors (a combination of high and low signals) and supports any drive connection interfaces.

The downside is the high cost of the license ($90).

One of the best and multifunctional utilities for checking a device for damaged areas. Has the following functionality:

restores and reconfigures sectors;
fixes partition tables;
restores files and creates backup copies;
selects files in the table;
copies data from remote partitions;
creates backup copies of data.

This utility uses several methods to identify problems, as well as the ability to monitor SMART attributes and clean up the hard drive.

Important! The program supports all versions of Windows, but it does not scan/test the drive where the OS is installed.

With it you can scan one or several hard drives at the same time.

"Seagate Seatools" for Windows

The application supports all modern Windows systems. It can be used to do both basic and advanced testing. Simpler than "Seagate Seatools" for DOS, but less powerful.