Instead of saying your drive is OK or Bad, like the built-in tools do, CrystalDiskInfo and DriveDx also have more intermediary labels, like Caution or Warning, respectively.

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DRIVEDX TRIAL SOFTWAREīest Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software. Your hard drive hasn't been acting the same lately. It's starting to make clicking or screeching noises, it can't seem to find your files, and it's moving really slowly. It might be time to say farewell-but here's what you should do before it goes to the big data center in the sky.Įvery hard drive dies eventually, and when it's near death, you'll see the signs: strange noises, corrupted files, crashing during boot, and very slow transfer speeds all point to the inevitable end. This is normal, especially after your drive is more than a few years old. On older spinning drives, moving parts like the motor can degrade over time, or the drives' magnetic sectors can go bad. Newer solid-state drives (SSDs) don't have moving parts, but their storage cells degrade a little bit every time you write to them, meaning they too will eventually fail (though SSD reliability is much better than it used to be). Unless your drive experiences excessive heat or physical trauma, it'll probably fail gradually. That means even if your drive isn't making strange noises, you should keep an eye on its health once in a while, so you can prepare for death before it happens. information can be misleading, since it only lets you know when your drive is near death-but you can start to experience problems even if the basic S.M.A.R.T. Status is okay.įor a closer look, I recommend downloading CrystalDiskInfo for Windows (free), or DriveDx for macOS ($20 with a free trial), both of which will offer up more detailed S.M.A.R.T. information than your computer provides on its own.

Instead of saying your drive is 'OK' or 'Bad,' like the built-in tools do, CrystalDiskInfo and DriveDx also have more intermediary labels, like 'Caution' or 'Warning,' respectively. These labels apply to hard drives and SSDs that are starting to wear down, but aren't necessarily on their deathbed (you can read more about how CrystalDiskInfo applies those labels here).įor example, my drive above has a few bad and reallocated sectors, and I haven't run into any issues-probably because those bad sectors weren't housing any actual data at the time.

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