Skip to main content

How to Check the Health of your Hard Drive

Hard disk failure is possibly the worst thing that can happen to your computer and it often occurs without giving any warning signs.

Test Your Hard Drive for Impending Problems

hard diskYou may however run certain tests on your computer beforehand to get an idea about the current condition of your hard disk. This should in turn help you decide whether a replacement drive is necessary or not.

Step 1: Check your hard disk for errors

All recent versions of Windows include a utility called Chkdsk.exe that can check your hard disk for any bad sectors.
You may either run Chkdsk from the command line (see details) or launch Windows Explorer, right click the drive that you wish to examine and choose Properties. Switch to the Tools tab and click the “Check Now” button under Error checking. Select “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” to perform a thorough disk check.

Step 2: Understand the sounds of your disk

Do you sometimes hear strange sounds coming out of the CPU box? Well, if the hard drive is making those sounds, it could be an alarming situation and your best bet would be that you turn off the computer before any further damage is done to the disk.
But how do you distinguish between sounds coming from a hard disk with noise that’s made by the fans or the power supply? Here’s a useful page where you can listen to recorded sounds of various hard drives that have lead to a crash. If your disk is making a similar sound, get a replacement quickly.

Step 3: Catch errors before they happen

Disk Checkup is a free hard disk monitoring utility that displays tons of diagnostic data about your disk. While the level of detail it provides may easily confuse even tech-savvy users, just ignore the numbers and keep the utility running in the background.
It monitors your disk’s temperature, read and write error rate, etc. and will alert you when the values of any of these parameters approach dangerous levels. These may be signs of an impending disk failure. Disk Checkup is free for personal use.

Step 4: Thoroughly test your Hard Disk

SeaTools is free diagnostic tool that can completely test your hard drive regardless of the OS installed on it. The tool is provided by Seagate but it works with non-Seagate disk drives as well.
To get started, you need to download the ISO image of SeaTools for DOS and create a bootable CD. Now boot the computer with the CD in the drive, accept the license agreement and run a long test (the full scan). If any defects are found, a list will be offered at the end or after aborting the disk scan.
Other computer vendors /disk manufactures including Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba (Fujitsu), Western Digital, Lenovo, Dell, etc. too offer diagnostic tools that work only with their own brand of hard drives. If you are having frequent computer problems (like system hangs or fails to boot up), you may run these tools to confirm if the problems are hard drive related.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Email On Deck: A disposable email address that works

Today, Team Inforpioneer brings an interesting Email service for our reader which will definitely help our readers to improve their internet security and will benefit in some other ways.  Here is a short description of this service.  EmailOnDeck.com is the premier site for all things relating to temporary, disposable and throwaway email addresses. We want to help you avoid SPAM, protect your online privacy, and stop you from having to give away your personal email address to every company and person on the internet who insists on you giving it to them. We work hard and will continue to work hard to give you a disposable email address that works with any site or app. We hope to help give you back the control of deciding who you want to give your personal info to. Temporary emails are perfect for any transaction where you want to improve your online privacy. Use them when you buy or sell Bitcoins or trade cryptocurrency, at exchanges, or locally. They can be used for QA testing of e
1 comment
Read more

Top 101 Ways to Promote a New Blog

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic. Content 1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas. 2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome. 3. Release a manifesto . 4. Release 2 manifestos . 5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people. 6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories). 7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you . 8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your nich
Post a Comment
Read more

Cell Phone Buying Guide 2010

I outline some of the most important factors to look into when purchasing a new cell phone. When your old cell phone squeaks like a rusty door hinge, has more lint under the screen than your jean pockets, and lasts half an afternoon with a full charge, it’s time for a new one. But with most cell phone contracts lasting two years, a new phone shouldn’t be the type of purchase you make lightly. Check out our quick and dirty guide to your next phone purchase to make sure you cover all the bases on your shopping trip. Choosing a carrier Because most U.S. cell phone carriers heavily subsidize phone purchases in exchange for two-year contracts, and lock the phones to their networks, your choice of cell carrier will have more impact on which type of phone you end up with than any other factor. If you already have carrier and feel satisfied with it, the choice is easy. If not, you’ll need to choose one. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon dominate the cell phone market in the States. Speak
1 comment
Read more