Check your hard drive for functionality online. How to test a new hard drive after purchase? Deep testing software

As you know, all computer data is stored on a small, but often very capacious storage device - a hard drive, or hard drive, HDD (Hard Disk Drive). So, like any device, the hard drive gradually wears out, which affects its performance and performance. You can notice this: if your PC (laptop, netbook) is a “seasoned” friend who has been working for several years, it may begin to freeze, “think” for a long time when accessing certain folders, etc. These are sure signs of the appearance of “bad” sectors on the hard drive. In this case, he simply needs your help in the form of checking and, if possible, correcting errors in his work. This can be done in several ways, I’ll tell you everything in order. If you decide to figure out how to check your hard drive for errors, then my recommendation is to read this article to the end, and only then start following the steps described in this article.

In order to properly maintain your hard drive and extend its life for many years, you need to understand some basics of how the drive works. Therefore, first I will try to tell you in as simple a language as possible what is happening inside the hard drive, and because of what it loses its “former grip” over time, and after that I will mention what programs will help you in maintaining and fixing your hard drive. If you do not have the desire to delve into the problem literally from the inside, but plan to simply go through instructions like “click here - click here” - move to the second part of the article with a description of methods and programs for checking the hard drive. The first section of the material will be devoted to theory, and I will try to make it as interesting and understandable as possible. Go!

How the hard drive works and formatting

A hard drive is a device consisting of several glass/aluminum plates coated with a ferromagnetic material. Above the surface of each platter (disk), at a distance of about ten nm, there are magnetic heads that read and write information to the disk.

During the production of hard drives, the final stage involves applying tracks, sectors and marks to the magnetic surface of the disk. This process is called low-level formatting. Thus, service information is written to the disk. In simple terms, the “magnetization” of service information is higher than that with which we will subsequently fill the disk. That is why user data and files can be written and erased many times, but service information cannot.

IMPORTANT: if you read/heard somewhere that low-level formatting will help fix hard drive errors, and this can be done using any program, remember: this operation is performed once and only at the factory using expensive equipment. It is impossible to perform low-level formatting using software at home! Of course, you can format it, but it won’t be the formatting we would like.

Sometimes I resort to such formatting (there are special utilities), but I do this procedure to format the disk when other programs refuse to do this. Ask why this happens? Because some programs, if they cannot format the disk, write a message, for example, “Format the hard disk could not be completed,” and if you use special programs that format several times in the same area, then sometimes this option works - when the disk cannot be easily formatted.

The hard drive is equipped with some semblance of an operating system (not Windows, which we all know about and use). With the help of marks and OS commands applied to the disk, the drive “understands” exactly where the magnetic head needs to be delivered at the current moment in time for reading/writing. The table of tracks, sectors and labels, as well as the disk OS - Firmware, firmware - is stored in a special section, closed from the BIOS and the operating systems we are familiar with, in a zone. Therefore, if you suddenly wonder whether you need to update the firmware of your hard drive, know: you don’t need to do this. After all, a hard drive is not an IPhone, and it doesn’t need updates for a modern hard drive to work properly.

Bad HDD sectors – physical, logical, software

We are getting closer to the problem - the hard drive is losing its functionality.

So, the disks are marked into tracks and the tracks are divided into sectors. By the way, the minimum hard disk sector size available to the user is 512 bytes. What happens if a sector suddenly becomes unreadable? The hard drive controller gives the command to make a few more reading attempts (at this moment we, on the other side of the monitor, can notice how the PC is slightly “stupid”), and if the operation is unsuccessful, the system marks the sector as faulty (failed, bad block ), and the information that should have been written to this sector is written to another working sector in the reserve section. At the same time, information is entered into the labels table that this sector is now considered non-working. The process of redirecting from bad sectors to spare ones is called “remapping”, or in slang “remap”.

Note: imagine: the magnetic head cannot always continuously move along the tracks sector by sector - due to bad sectors, it has to jump to the backup track and back every now and then. For this reason, by the way, you can hear extraneous sounds and crackling sounds from the HDD. Naturally, the more bad sectors there are on the disk, the slower the hard drive works.

There are several types of bad sectors:

Physical bad block. Such sectors arise as a result of physical, mechanical damage to the hard drive - shedding of a ferromagnetic material, cracks, chips. It is logical to assume that their occurrence is due to physical impact - vibration, shock or high temperature (overheating), dust penetrating inside the disk. A physical bad sector cannot be corrected by any software; the only solution is to enter it into the defect table and assign it a “deputy” on the backup track. Therefore, do not knock on your laptop and also be attentive to the computer system unit, which is usually placed under the table.
Logical bad block. They are a consequence of a violation of the logic of the hard drive and are divided into two categories: correctable and irreparable.
1. Uncorrectable logical bad block. In this case, service information is violated - sector label, address, etc., which is sometimes possible to correct, but is only accessible to specialized specialists with expensive equipment.
2. Correctable logical bad block. Along with the information, an additional parameter is written to the sector - a checksum, or Error Correction Code (ECC), which allows you to restore information even in the event of a failure. It happens that you turn off the computer (for example, from the outlet while the system was still running), information was written to the hard drive, but the checksum was not entered into the table. This is where HDD recovery programs come to the rescue, which, “without asking” the sectors, forcibly write zeros into them, and, accordingly, new checksums. After this, the sector returns to work, and the disk is formatted without problems using standard Windows tools. If formatting is not done, the hard drive will access the disk multiple times and your computer or laptop will freeze due to an incorrect checksum.

Software bad block. The name itself tells us that such blocks arise during the operation of the program, which means that such problems can be corrected with the help of any program. This includes incorrectly marked sectors and other “small things” that can be corrected by regular formatting.

IMPORTANT: I'm sure you all know this very well, but just in case I'll say it: formatting will destroy all your data on the disk. Therefore, before formatting a disk, make sure that all the necessary information from it is copied to another medium. Otherwise, you will simply lose it.

Standard Windows utilities for checking hard drives

We've sorted out the theory, let's move on to practice. There are several applications for working with “problem” hard drives that have proven themselves to be a powerful and reliable tool. First things first.

By tradition, I’ll say a few words about standard Windows tools. The functionality, of course, leaves much to be desired, but it will do for preventing disk errors. To check the disk using the OS, open Explorer, right-click on any of the disks and select “Properties” from the menu.

In the window that opens, go to the “Service” tab and see that we have few options - you can check for file system errors or run defragmentation. We won’t dwell on checking (press the button and check), but I’ll say a few words about defragmentation. As the name implies, this process is the reverse of the process of disk fragmentation as a result of a remap (this was discussed in the theoretical part of the article above). Simply put, defragmentation is the organization of the disk table and spare sectors for faster access to the latter and speed up the response of the hard drive as a whole. It is recommended to run disk defragmenter occasionally. However, remember: any operation to check or repair a hard drive is a lengthy process, so you need to allow yourself some time.

Conclusion: you need to check the disk for errors in the file system and you can also defragment the disk.

Another way to check the disk using standard means is through the command line. We launch it - press “Win” + “R” on the keyboard, then enter “cmd” and click “OK”. Next, write the command “chkdsk C: /f /r”, where “C:” is the letter of the drive being checked, “/F” and “/R” are parameters indicating that it is necessary to automatically correct errors, as well as check for bad sectors and try recover information.

Attention! If you are unable to use this command, namely, you do not have enough privileges to use this command, then below I will tell you what to do in this situation.

Note: the method that I described above rarely helps, so I highly recommend the chkdsk utility, which saved me more than once.

You should also take into account that if your physical disk is divided into logical drives, for example, C, D, etc., then you need to check all your logical drives.

If the disk you are checking is currently in use, the system will prompt you to schedule a disk check the next time you restart the PC, you need to press the Y key: “Y” - “Yes”, and “N” - “No” ). After which you must reboot your device.

If the disk is free, a check will be carried out, the results of which will be displayed on the screen. The program may ask you to disconnect the volume (local disk), in which case you also press the “Y” key on the keyboard. Below I have shown an example of this message:

If you run the command “chkdsk /?”, the program will display a complete list of parameters that can be used with this utility, however, in most cases, the method described above is sufficient for diagnostics.

If the utility writes that you do not have privileges to execute the command, then you need to run it as an administrator. It's easy to do. For users who have Windows 8 or 10 installed, press the “Win” + “X” keys, a menu will open where you need to select “Command Prompt (Administrator)”. After this, you can safely enter the command you need. If Windows 7 or XP is installed on your computer, then you need to search for “cmd” or “command line”, right-click on it and select run as administrator.

By the way, you can return to the results of the disk scan later, even after closing the command line and restarting the PC. For this:

Press “Win” + “R”, write “eventvwr.msc” in the line, click “OK”.
In the “Event Viewer” window, open “Windows Logs”, right-click on “Application” and select “Find...” from the menu that appears.
Enter “chkdsk” into the search bar and find the corresponding log entry.

Well, we’ve sorted out the standard checking tools, now let’s look at software from third-party manufacturers.

If Windows does not boot for you, then connect the hard drive you are testing to another computer. This way, you will boot from another hard drive, and check your own (which may have errors).

Checking the drive using Seagate SeaTools

This program, as the name suggests, was released by the manufacturer of the HDDs of the same name - Seagate, but this does not prevent it from being “omnivorous” and working with any disks. You can download it from the official website, the software is free: . At the time of writing, you need to click on the link “SeaTools Diagnostic Software for Windows OS”, which is located on the left. After downloading and installing the program, you need to run it.

Next, select the disk that you are trying to restore to normal operation (by checking the box on the left) and click “Basic tests”. Here you can select options for working with your hard drive. In the picture below I showed what checking capabilities this utility has. You can use all the options this program offers. You can click on the picture below to see the program interface:

Like any self-respecting utility, there is a boot disk image (Seagate for DOS), launching from which will allow you to use the scanning functions before loading the OS. For example, when the system does not boot. It is advisable to check the hard drive in this mode. Because this way you will not have problems during verification.

In addition, the program has a “Help” section, which is entirely in Russian.

Checking Western Digital drives

The next utility is more narrowly focused and is designed to work exclusively with Western Digital HDDs. Its name is Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic. To download the program, go to the manufacturer’s website http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=ru, find the program in the list and download it. Next, run the program, right-click on the desired drive and select “Run Diagnostics”.

Traditionally, there is a version of a bootable iso image and the capabilities are similar to previous software, the interface is elementary.

Disk analysis with HDDScan

I will mention another worthy representative of the “army” of fighters against hard drive errors. Here, special mention should be made of the testing function in linear recording mode - “Test” - “Erase”. When launched, the program forcibly writes data sector by sector, thereby returning most of the bad sectors to work (this was also mentioned above). By the way, if it is possible to disconnect the hard drive from your PC and connect it to another with HDDScan installed on board, then use this verification option. This way you will achieve maximum scanning efficiency. You can download the program on the website. After downloading, you need to unpack the archive, go to the unpacked folder and run the “HDDScan.exe” file.

To run the test, select your hard drive on the left, then click on the picture with the hard drive and select “Surface Tests”.

In the window that opens, leave everything as default – “Read” and click “Add Test”. So, we have started the scan, now we can click on the “RD-Read” entry by double-clicking the left mouse to open a window where there will be detailed information about working with the hard drive.

If you have a lot of delays - from 20ms and above, then this means that your disk is already very bad and you need to think about where to copy all the important data that is on hire. In the future, you need to replace the bad hard drive with a new one. It is advisable to use the program on another computer so that no processes interfere with checking your disk.

Recovering a hard drive in Victoria

So we get to, perhaps, the most popular tool for “revitalizing” magnetic data storage devices. This program is sometimes very problematic to download from the official website and therefore I will give you a link to another site where you can download this program http://www.softportal.com/software-3824-victoria.html. I always try to provide links only to official sites, but sometimes developer sites do not open for some reason and therefore I had to provide a link to a third-party resource. This site is popular and therefore you don’t have to worry about viruses.

After downloading the archive, unpack it and run the program as administrator. Be sure to take this step!

At the beginning of work, select the “Standard” tab, and in the window on the right, select the desired disk, and then click on the “Passport” button. In the log window below you will see how your HDD was identified. If an entry appears in the log, it means that the program was able to read information from this hard drive.

If this does not happen and you see “Get S.M.A.R.T. command... Error reading S.M.A.R.T!” — probably the HDD controller is not working in the mode we need. To change it, you will have to go to the BIOS and go through the following path: “Config” - “Serial ATA (SATA)” - “SATA Controller Mode Option” - change from “AHCI” to “Compatibility” (IDE). Save the changes to the BIOS and continue working with the program.

Note: do not forget to return everything to its place after finishing working with Victoria.

So we got to the disk test: go to the “Test” tab, click “Start”.

As the check progresses, the cells in the left window will be filled with multi-colored rectangles. It is in our interests that they are all gray - this is the color of the working sector. But the blue and red ones are an indication of the bad sectors of the disk. If after checking there are especially many blue cells, then you need to run the check again, first turning on the “Remap” option (located at the bottom right). As a result of such a check, the program will try to isolate broken blocks (I also talked about this in theory), hiding them. It is also worth noting that orange and green rectangles mean that there are sectors on your disk where there are very high delays. If they are present, then this is also very bad.

IMPORTANT: if the results of the disk check are disappointing, I recommend copying the information to a backup disk, or being prepared to replace it. Once the disk begins to “lose” sectors, then most likely this process will continue. It is impossible to predict how long the disk will serve you. If this hard drive does not have the necessary files, and you only use it for browsing the Internet, then of course you don’t have to buy a new storage medium. The next time you have problems with this hard drive, it means that it is already unstable and you will need to buy a hard drive.

I tried to describe theory and practice as simply as possible. Of course, it will be difficult for the average user to study the material in 5 minutes, and therefore give your disk enough time to resolve the issue of its unstable operation.

In this article, I gave examples of utilities that computer technicians use, and if you use other programs, then there is nothing wrong with that. After all, the most important thing in your case is the result. Namely, to understand what to do with your media - restore it or it’s time to buy a new hard drive.

I hope I and this article were useful to you. Good luck with your testing and only high-quality hard drives!

Video that will help you work with Victoria:

The hard drive is one of the computer components that have a limited lifespan. Therefore, when buying a used hard drive or a second-hand computer, you should check its performance status. Otherwise, you risk having to replace it, which will cost no less than $45. You will learn how and by what criteria to determine the condition of a hard drive in this article.

Factors that indicate the health of the hard drive

In order to understand how long the hard drive of a computer or laptop will last, it is enough to pay attention to two points:

S.M.A.R.T;
Number of slow or BAD sectors.

Let's watch S.M.A.R.T.

Any diagnosis of a hard drive begins with checking it. which records a lot of useful information for the entire operating time of the hard drive.

There are a lot of programs that allow you to view S.M.A.R.T. hard drives. One of them is Aida64. You can download it from the manufacturer. The free trial version is enough not only to consider S.M.A.R.T. , but also so that, for example, .

Download and install Aida64 of any version.

Downloading Aida64 from the official website

Good S.M.A.R.T in Aida64

All information on the selected hard drive will be displayed on the right side of the window.

Ideally, all positions should be without exclamation marks or red crosses.

Example of bad S.M.A.R.T

An interesting position in S.M.A.R.T. is Power on time count. This is the number of hours worked. A value up to 10,000 is more or less acceptable. Although there are hard drives that have used up to 25,000. In general, the lower this indicator, the better.

Also deserves special attention. This is the number of sectors remapped. It must be equal to 0, otherwise the hard drive can be considered unreliable.

Checking the hard drive surface

After S.M.A.R.T. checked and its condition is satisfactory (without exclamation marks or red crosses), then you can begin checking the surface of the hard drive for the presence of slow and unreadable BAD sectors.

Most old hard drives contain erroneous records, etc. bad blocks. Some of them lead to sad consequences; It's only a matter of time before this happens to your hard drive.

Windows OS offers tools for finding errors on the HDD, but they are not intended for diagnostics and testing. We invite you to familiarize yourself with much more effective tools.

So, how can you check your hard drive for errors? Here is a list of recommended programs:

HDD Regenerator – a program for testing the hard drive and treating bad sectors

HDD Regenerator is a utility for checking your hard drive, a professional tool for diagnosing, finding and fixing errors. The word "Regenerator" clarifies: the program is not only capable of detecting possible malfunctions, structure errors and bad sectors, but is also suitable for correcting them.

HDD Regenerator program interface

HDD Regenerator is a program for checking your hard drive and fixing errors. Can also be used as a complete tool for recovering damaged files. If the information is not readable, regeneration will allow you to bypass bad blocks and read problematic files.

In order to determine the condition of the HDD, you must pass a special test. Additional information can be retrieved from S.M.A.R.T data. HDD Regenerator has the corresponding tools.

Other features of the program:

FAT and NTFS file systems are supported, but the system type does not matter when testing
Displaying detailed statistics about the operation and status of the hard drive
Creating a bootable regenerating flash drive or CD/DVD based on HDD Regenerator
Prescan mode: quick diagnostics of the hard drive (surface scanning)
HDD monitoring in real time
Data security: the program works in read mode (with the exception of overwriting bad sectors)

The cost of the PRO version of HDD Regenerator is $79.99/year. There is a free trial version available that allows you to restore 1 bad sector for free.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (WinDFT) – a program for testing and checking the condition of the hard drive

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test is a program for diagnosing a hard drive and finding read errors. The utility allows you to quickly check the status of internal and external hard drives that support G-Technology.

Seagate Seatools for Windows: Testing Drive Performance

Seatools from Seagate is a free HDD diagnostic tool for Windows and DOS. The utility will allow you to identify some problems on the HDD before contacting the warranty service to repair the disk (In our realities, instead of repairs, you will be offered a replacement device, as a result of which you will lose all saved data).

Note. The program is not compatible with all HDD models; it is only relevant for hard drives from Seagate.

Problems that the program can detect:

Violation of the HDD file system structure
Bad sectors and read errors
Driver errors and Windows system problems
Equipment incompatibility
Windows bootloader (MBR) corruption on the disk
Presence of viruses, keyloggers or other malicious applications

Seatools works as follows: the user selects tests for diagnostics, runs them, and as a result receives a detailed report. If the test is passed, the PASS mark will be displayed, otherwise FAIL. Please note that HDD testing can take up to 4 hours. To save time, you can choose one of three testing modes.

Seagate Seatools can also be used to “treat” your hard drive. That is, the program is able to detect bad blocks and try to restore or overwrite them with zeros (this method allows you to subsequently ignore problem blocks when reading/writing the disk structure).

HDD Health program: checking the disk and reading SMART attributes

HDD Health is another free program for testing your hard drive and monitoring its performance. The utility checks the hard drive for errors (SSD / HDD) and makes a forecast (Health indicator as a percentage).

Preliminary check of the disk for errors using basic SMART indicators. HDD Health program interface

The main program window displays the following information:

manufacturer, model, firmware version
current HDD (SSD) temperature (available through the notification area)
general condition of the disk structure
other attributes (via the Extended info menu)

Similar to other diagnostic tools, HDD Health reads S.M.A.R.T indicators, which allows you to clarify the current hardware performance. The program does not have any other tools for calculating errors or checking for bad blocks.

HDD Health 4.2: checking the status of the SSD disk

Thus, the tools of the HDD Health program will be useful to those for whom S.M.A.R.T. indicators are sufficient to check the condition of the hard drive (and if the condition of the device is not critical). Fortunately, the latest HDD/SSD drives have S.M.A.R.T technology. implemented.

HDDScan - a program to check your hard drive for bad sectors

HDDScan is a free program for hard drive diagnostics, reading S.M.A.R.T. and other parameters. After testing, you will receive a detailed log file detailing the disk status.

HDDScan supports various types of storage devices:

RAID arrays
HDD drives with IDE/SATA interface
SATA/ATA SSD
USB flash drives

Let's note the most useful functions of HDDScan:

Checking the hard drive for errors that are not detected by standard Windows utilities: bad blocks and bad sectors
Testing the hard drive (Read/Wipe)
Checking the temperature for all hard drives connected to the PC
Export any information as a custom report

CHKDSK is a Windows OS utility for checking errors and fixing bad blocks

You can check your hard drive for errors without installing third-party programs. The Windows operating system allows you to do this through the Check Disk utility.

The CHKDSK utility appeared in DOS. It not only searches for, but also corrects basic file system errors. It should be clarified that it is not intended to search for all types of errors and is not a HDD diagnostic tool.

However, using CHKDSK you can fix errors on various storage devices: not only on your hard drive, but also on a flash drive and an SD card. Starting with Windows NT, it fixes bad blocks (physically bad sectors) by marking them accordingly. Subsequently, these areas are bypassed by other programs when reading/writing.

HDDLife - a program for monitoring the status of your hard drive

Usually the heart of a computer is called the processor or motherboard. But they serve faithfully for several years, and then the hard drive suddenly fails. In terms of loss, no component can compare with it.

The hard drive is computer memory, which, of course, needs to be protected. In order to prevent sudden data loss, you need to regularly back up your data to another HDD or storage media. However, if you want to prevent hard drive failure in advance, you need to determine its current state. The HDDLife program will help with this.

HDDLife has several very useful features. First of all, monitoring the status of the hard drive. The “health” of the HDD is shown as a color scale. If everything is in order, the scale is green; if the disk has worked for a decent period of time, the color is yellow. The red scale is already a signal of a pre-emergency condition: the hard drive has worked and is ready to retire. In this case, it is better not to take risks and quickly replace the component. In the pro version of HDDLife, you can set up an email notification about the pre-failure state of hard drives. If there are a lot of computers on the network, then the diagnostic option will come in handy. The status graph also informs you how long the disk has been working. This is worth paying attention to, especially if you are buying a used drive or just want to make sure it is new.

The second important section is displaying the disk temperature. Any electronics works, or rather wears out faster, at elevated temperatures. And too high a temperature, as a rule, leads to disastrous consequences. If the indicator text is green, then everything is in order and the disk is in good thermal conditions. Otherwise, you need to buy special cooling or check the ventilation of the slot in which the disk is located. On some HDDs, the program allows you to adjust the noise level and performance. This is done using a slider that determines the relationship between the characteristics. Either this is the possibility of a special version for a laptop, or a limitation of the trial version - however, the option was not available for us. Some HDDLife functions cannot be called unique: for example, an indicator of available space. If there is not enough space on the partitions, the now familiar warning is displayed. Free space monitoring is available in Windows, as in almost any OS, so the message is more annoying than informative.

The program is distributed in three versions: free, HDDLife Professional and HDDLife for Notebooks. The differences can be found on the page http://www.hddlife.ru/rus/compare.html.

Answers to readers' questions

I often resort to system recovery due to a crash. It often freezes, the processor is constantly overloaded, I have already deleted unnecessary programs. As best I could, I closed all background programs. Experts say that you need to change the hard drive, they say, there are many damaged (broken) sectors. I want to try this program to check sectors. How to check your hard drive for errors?

Answer. Indeed, if you experience the problems described in your question, checking your hard drive for bad sectors will not hurt. At a minimum, we recommend scanning the disk using applications such as HDD Regenerator and Victoria. You can find out how to check your hard drive for bad sectors directly in the documentation. Whether it’s worth it or not, the wording is not very correct. You should check your HDD for errors regularly if the data is of even minimal value to you.

First! All your programs are not Russified, which creates inconvenience in use, long inaccurate translations and work on a whim. My hard drive problem is an I/O error on the device during initialization. I don't need the data. Sector 0 is normal, the rest need to be restored. There is no physical or other damage, the parameters are good, no overheating. I assume that with the help of HDD Regenerator everything can be corrected or by editing the sector record manually using programs that provide this opportunity, it is a long procedure, so something faster is preferable. Seagate Barracuda 1T drive! All the best to you and good luck!

Reading time: 6 minutes. Views 64 Published 12/01/2016

In a modern computer, the hard drive is the most unreliable device. Since the number of failures of this component is very large, and the whole danger is that you cannot predict the time when it will break, but you can periodically check the hard drive for serviceability. Due to untimely diagnosis and prevention, many users lose important information. Therefore, I recommend that you always pay attention to how your computer works.

If so, then you need to check the hard drive for serviceability. I will tell you how to do this in this article.

Let's first look at how a hard drive works and what it consists of.

HDD consists of glass and aluminum plates, which are coated with a special layer of ferromagnetic material. In simple terms, a hard drive is a magnetic recording device.

For clarity, I am attaching an image of the insides of the HDD.

When producing hard drives, the final stage is low-level formatting, which forms a “disk map”, dividing it into tracks and sectors. Special marks are also applied to ensure that the head falls into the desired sector. A sector is a unit of measurement on a hard drive that is equal to 512 bytes.

To check the hard drive for serviceability, we will use special programs.

Checking HDD temperature

It is important to monitor the temperature of the hard drive, as overheating can lead to its failure. To check the temperature of the hard drive, you can use utilities such as AIDA or HDD Life.

You can download these programs on the official websites, to do this, enter the names of the programs.

After installing the HDDLife program, run it and you will clearly see the status of your hard drive, as well as its temperature.

You can also perform a disk test if you wish.

In the AIDA program you can also view the disk temperature parameters.

To do this, launch the program, open the item “Computer” - “Sensors”

All information is at your fingertips. If you see that the temperature of the hard drives is high enough, you need to install active cooling. Special cooling systems for hard drives are sold in stores.

We check the status of the hard drive using CrystalDiskInfo.

You can download the CrystalDiskInfo program from the official website, it is distributed free of charge, but has quite rich functionality and can provide all the necessary information to the user about the condition of the disk. If the program, after diagnostics, determines that the disk is fully functional, it will assess the condition as “Good”. If there are any problems, the program will give an “Alarm” or “Bad” rating if the disk is in a dying state.

You can also view S.M.A.R.T information in CrystalDiskInfo - this is the initial data by which the program evaluates the condition of the disk.

We check the status of the hard drive with the Victoria program.

In order to prevent problems with your hard drive in advance, I recommend using the Victoria program for Windows. With its help, you can get a large amount of important information about the disk, as well as check the disk for bad sectors and prevent it. The program has a free and paid version; to determine the state of the disk, it will be enough for us to use the free version. The program is suitable even for beginners, as it has an intuitive interface, and when scanning the HDD, the user clearly sees the state of the sectors.

Since we are only interested in the condition of the disk, we will not delve into the process of deep checking and restoring problem sectors, if any, but for a complete understanding, I will describe the main functions. First, download the program, it is quite lightweight and weighs less than 1 MB, so after downloading, launch the application - the icon with a green cross. In the main program window you will see a horizontal menu with switching tabs. Let's look at the most important ones.

During the test, the program will scan the disk for readability of sectors; as you can see, the quality of sectors is highlighted in different colors. Let's figure out what each of the colors means.

Gray sectors are the fastest sectors, we have no questions about them.
Green sectors are sectors that work more slowly, but they are also in good condition.
Orange - slow sectors, if the disk has a lot of such sectors, then you need to think about its health, because because of them, the disk starts to work slower, and as a rule, such sectors will fail in the future.
Red – sectors are damaged and cannot be read. If the program detects them, you need to think about a new disk.
Blue sectors with a cross are those that caused a failure when reading. Information from them cannot be restored, but you can replace this sector with a working one, and perhaps the disk will work a little longer, but it is better not to delay the replacement.

If you pay attention, there are four buttons on the test tab panel: Ignore, Erase, Remap, Restore, they will also be useful to us, let’s look at their purpose.

Ignore is a function in which only a surface test is carried out and no actions are applied to bad sectors.
Erase – when this function is enabled, bad sectors will be erased.
Remap – if this function is enabled, the program will try to replace bad sectors with working ones. That is, when scanning, the program finds a bad sector, marks it as not working and replaces it with a good, working sector.
Restore – this function is available only in the paid version of the program. When enabled, the program will try to restore the non-working sector.

I have described the main functions of the program; all you have to do is select the one you need and run the test. It may take quite a long time, depending on the capacity of the hard drive, as well as its condition. Therefore, please be patient. If many problem sectors are found on your disk, then do not delay in purchasing a new one, and make sure to transfer all the important information to another as soon as possible, and not regret losing it in the future.

That's all for me, now you know how to check the health of your hard drive, and you can take steps to replace it in advance.

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.

Checking the hard drive for bad sectors is quite possible. 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.