A utility for diagnosing a hard drive. Checking and diagnosing the hard drive

Hello.

Forewarned is forearmed! This rule comes in handy when working with hard drives. If you know in advance that such and such a hard drive will most likely fail, then the risk of data loss will be minimal.

Of course, no one will give a 100% guarantee, but with a high degree of probability, some programs can analyze S.M.A.R.T. readings. (a set of software and hardware that monitors the condition of the hard drive) and draw conclusions on how long it will last.

In general, there are dozens of programs to perform such a hard drive check, but in this article I wanted to focus on some of the most visual and easy to use. So…

How to find out the status of your hard drive

HDDlife

(By the way, in addition to HDD, it also supports SSD drives)

One of the best programs for constantly monitoring the condition of your hard drive. It will help you recognize the threat in time and replace the hard drive. Most of all, it captivates with its clarity: after launch and analysis, HDDlife presents the report in a very convenient form: you are shown the percentage of the “health” of the disk and its performance (the best indicator, of course, is 100%).

If your performance is above 70%, this indicates the good condition of your disks. For example, after a couple of years of work (quite active by the way), the program analyzed and concluded: that this hard drive is about 92% healthy (which means that it should last, unless force majeure occurs, at least the same amount) .

After launch, the program minimizes to the tray next to the clock and you can always monitor the status of your hard drive. If any problem is detected (for example, the disk temperature is high, or there is too little space left on the hard drive), the program will notify you with a pop-up window. Example below.

HDDLIFE alerts you when your hard drive is running out of space. Windows 8.1.

If the program analyzes and gives you a window like the one in the screenshot below, I advise you not to delay making a backup copy (and replacing the HDD).

HDDLIFE - the data on your hard drive is in danger, the faster you copy it to other media, the better!

Hard Disk Sentinel

This utility can compete with HDDlife - it monitors the disk status just as well. What is most captivating about this program is how informative it is and how easy it is to work with. Those. it will be useful for both a novice user and an already experienced one.

After launching Hard Disk Sentinel and analyzing the system, you will see the main program window: hard drives (including external HDDs) will be presented on the left, and their status will be displayed in the right window.

By the way, there is a rather interesting function for predicting the performance of the disk, according to how long it will serve you: for example, in the screenshot below the forecast is more than 1000 days (that’s about 3 years!).

The condition of the hard drive is EXCELLENT. No problematic or weak sectors were found. No speed or data transmission errors were detected.
No action needs to be taken.

By the way, the program has a rather useful function: you can set the threshold for the critical temperature of the hard drive, upon reaching which Hard Disk Sentinel will notify you that it has been exceeded!

Hard Disk Sentinel: disk temperature (including the maximum for the entire time the disk was used).

Ashampoo HDD Control

An excellent utility for monitoring the status of hard drives. The monitor built into the program allows you to find out in advance about the first problems with the disk (by the way, the program can even notify you about this by e-mail).

Also, in addition to the main functions, a number of auxiliary ones are built into the program:

Disk defragmentation;

Testing;

Cleaning the disk from garbage and temporary files (always relevant);

Deleting the history of visiting sites on the Internet (useful if you are not alone at the computer and do not want anyone to know what you are doing);

There are also built-in utilities for reducing disk noise, adjusting power, etc.

Screenshot of the Ashampoo HDD Control 2 window: everything is fine with the hard drive, condition 99%, performance 100%, temperature 41 degrees. (it is desirable that the temperature be less than 40 degrees, but the program believes that for this disk model everything is in order).

By the way, the program is completely in Russian, intuitively thought out - even a novice PC user can figure it out. Pay special attention to the temperature and status indicators in the main program window. If the program produces errors or the condition is assessed as extremely low (+ in addition there is a grinding or noise coming from the HDD), I recommend that you first copy all the data to other media, and then start dealing with the disk.

Hard Drive Inspector

A distinctive feature of this program is:

1. Minimalism and simplicity: there is nothing superfluous in the program. It gives three indicators in percentage terms: reliability, performance and absence of errors;

Hard Drive Inspector - monitoring the condition of the hard drive.

СrystalDiskInfo

A simple but reliable utility for monitoring the status of hard drives. Moreover, it works even in cases where many other utilities refuse, crashing with errors.

The program supports several languages, is not full of settings, and is designed in a minimalist style. At the same time, it has quite rare functions, for example, reducing the disk noise level, temperature control, etc.

What is also very convenient is a graphical display of the situation:

Blue color (as in the screenshot below): everything is ok;

Yellow color: alarm, measures need to be taken;

Red: you need to take immediate action (if you still have time);

Gray: the program was unable to determine the readings.

CrystalDiskInfo 2.7.0 - screenshot of the main program window.

HD Tune

This program will be useful to more experienced users: who, in addition to a graphical display of the “health” of the disk, also need high-quality disk tests, in which they can familiarize themselves in detail with all the characteristics and parameters. It should also be noted that the program, in addition to HDD, also supports new-fangled SSD drives.

HD Tune offers a rather interesting feature to quickly check a disk for errors: a 500 GB disk is checked in about 2-3 minutes!

HD TUNE: quickly find errors on the disk. Red squares are not allowed on a new disk.

Also very necessary information is checking the disk read and write speed.

HD Tune - checking disk speed.

Well, we can’t help but note the tab with detailed information about the HDD. This is useful when you need to know, for example, supported functions, buffer/cluster size or disk rotation speed, etc.

HD Tune - detailed information about the hard drive.

In general, there are at least as many similar utilities that can be cited. I think that these will be more than enough for most...

And lastly: do not forget to make backup copies, even if the disk condition is rated as 100% excellent (at least the most important and valuable data)!

Good luck...

Victoria is one of the most popular programs for testing, service and assistance in recovering information from hard drives. There are versions for DOS and for Windows.

Using the second version, you can diagnose and repair hard drives directly in a running OS. But it is worth noting that fixing bad sectors directly from the OS often ends in failure, so experienced users use a different version.

The version of the Victoria program that runs under DOS is loaded from a boot disk or flash drive. With its help, you can carry out diagnostics and, if necessary, “treat” the hard drive. A boot disk with the Victoria program installed will be useful for those whose operating system cannot start due to bad blocks, or if you have one hard drive and you want to fix bad blocks on it.

Bad blocks or bad sectors– a bad or unreadable sector, an attempt to access which the drive returns an error.

Bad blocks can be: logical - the sector checksum is broken, which is easily corrected by the program; and physical - the surface of the hard drive or its mechanisms are destroyed.

To check your hard drive for bad sectors, it will be enough to install a version of the program that runs directly in Windows. Download it by following the link below.

Extract the files from the archive to the selected folder. Then we go to this folder, look for the executable file “vcr446f.exe”, right-click on it and run it as administrator.

In the main program window, go to the “Tests” tab. On the right side of the window, mark “Ignore” and “read” and click “Start”. Thus, we ran a simple hard drive surface test - it will not affect it in any way, but upon completion of the test, it will be clear what state your hard drive is in.

LBA is a mechanism for addressing and accessing a block of data on a hard or optical disk, in other words, it is a sector number. In the fields “Start LBA”, “End LBA” you can specify the starting and ending numbers of the sectors for which you want to scan.

Just below, the percentages passed from the maximum LBA value specified in the menu are indicated, and there is an indicator of the remaining time until the end of the test.

Now let's look at the test results. Read data blocks are sorted by access time, colored rectangles in the middle of the screen, which allows you to identify the condition of the hard drive surface, and detect not only bad blocks, but also emerging defects.

I only tested 14.1% of the hard drive surface, and of these blocks - 152 blocks with a latency of 600 ms - and these are possible candidates for bad problems. 600 ms is the block access time; ideally, the value should not exceed 30 ms.

Usually, working drives do not have “colored” rectangles, and the appearance of red and brown ones indicates some problems. If after checking you have blocks related to the “Err” field, these are irreparable bad sectors.

To fix bad blocks on your hard drive, you can try to “zero” them - the “Erase” function - the checksum of bad blocks will be restored when the entire sector is rewritten. You can also use the “Remap” function - replacing the address of an unreadable sector with one of the reserve sectors that were created specifically for such cases.

If the damaged sectors are not curable, that is, they are of a physical nature, then you can use the following methods.

If the bad sectors are at the end of the disk, then trim that end of the disk. We remember the sector number and use it in the same program to trim the size of the hard disk (hpa): we trim the disk to the first bad sector.

If bad sectors are located in the middle or beginning of the disk, then leave this part of the disk unmarked. That is, split the hard drive into logical volumes so that the logical drives used are not located in an area where there are bad sectors.

I will end here. Program for checking a hard drive for bad sectors Victoria showed us the condition of the hard drive surface. It's up to you to decide what to do next - treat it or buy a new one.

The HDD Scan program is designed to check hard drives under Windows 2000 and Windows XP. In this article I will consider HDD Scan v2.6 - the latest version released at the time of writing this review. (By the time this article was published, version 2.7 was already available.)

Main features of the program:

• View S.M.A.R.T. information
• Checking the disk surface in three modes: Verify, Read, Erase.
• Controlling the noise characteristics of the hard drive.
• Starting and stopping the spindle motor.

The HDD Scan program does not require installation and takes up about 350 KB on disk.

This program is absolutely free. You can download it from the website HDDGURU.COM.Interface

The program interface is completely in English. However, the program is very easy to use even for novice users.

Rice. 1. HDDScan interface.

Selecting a hard drive

In the drop-down menu located in the section Source Disk, you can select the hard drive with which the program will work. Below is the basic information about the selected hard drive: model ( Model), firmware version ( Firmware), serial number ( Serial) and the number of available physical sectors ( LBA).

View S.M.A.R.T.

To view S.M.A.R.T. settings you need to press a button S.M.A.R.T. located at the top of the program window.

Rice. 2. View S.M.A.R.T. settings

Description of table columns:

• Attribute- attribute number.
• Description- attribute name.
• Value- attribute value. Can range from 1 to 255 (the higher the number, the better).
• Worst- lowest attribute value ever.
• RAW- attribute value in hexadecimal notation (with the exception of Temperature, the value of which is indicated by the program in degrees Celsius).
• Treshold- threshold value of the attribute. Used to compare with the value of the parameter (Value).

The color of the indicator indicates the state of the attribute:

• Green - the attribute is normal.
• Yellow - deviation of the attribute from the norm.
• Red - a strong deviation of the attribute from the norm.

In this case, the received information is automatically saved to the file SMART.txt, located in the directory with the program.

Checking the disc surface

Surface testing parameters are found in the section Process.

• Start LBA And End LBA- the sector from which the check begins and the sector at which the check stops. If you need to scan the entire disk, this parameter does not need to be changed.
• Command- select the type of check ( Verify- verification, Read- full reading of sectors, Erase- writing zeros to all sectors). Selecting the Erase option will result in complete loss of all data on the disk!
• Start And Stop- start and stop the scan.
• Block size- number of sectors in one block. The default is 256 sectors (it is not recommended to change).

During the disk check, the elapsed time (Process time), current sector (Current LBA) and read speed (Kbytes/s) are indicated.

Rice. 3. Result of checking the disk surface.

In the tab Map the disk map is located. On the left there is a pointer that indicates the colors of the rectangles on the map, depending on the access time. Blue rectangle ( Bads) shows bad blocks (damaged sectors). To the right of the colored rectangles is the number of sectors with this access time found when checking the disk.

Rice. 4. Text report on surface inspection.

In the tab Report a text report about the inspection is located. It contains information about sectors with access times greater than 50 ms (green, orange and red rectangles), as well as bad blocks.

Rice. 5. Reading speed graph.

On the tab Graph There is a graph of disk reading speed. The X axis is the sector numbers, and the Y axis is the reading speed.

Noise Control

On the tab IDE Features, in the upper left section, you can change the noise level emitted by the hard drive. This can only be done if this option is permitted by the manufacturer (a green indicator and the inscription Enabled to his left). It should be noted that reducing noise entails reducing the speed of the hard drive.

Rice. 6. Control of the noise characteristics of the hard drive and the start/stop of the spindle motor.

Starting and stopping the spindle motor

On the tab IDE Features, in section Spindle Start/Stop You can start and stop the spindle motor of the hard drive. It is not recommended to stop the spindle motor on the system disk. Conclusion

This article discussed the main features of the HDD Scan program. This program also has some other features, but they are not so important and are practically not used.

HDD Scan is a convenient and functional program in its class.

This article does not provide step-by-step guides to diagnosing your hard drive. However, you will find in it links to programs that allow you to comprehensively test your hard drive, as well as instructions for them. In addition, the article describes how to scan your hard drive partitions using built-in Windows tools.

On this page

Windows Check Disk Utility (chkdsk)

Windows OS has its own disk checking utility. It can be launched from the GUI or from the command line.

Running disk check from the GUI

Open the window My computer, right-click on the disk or partition you want to scan and select from the context menu Properties. In the disk properties window, go to the tab Service and press the button Run check.

In the next window, click the button Launch.

The scan of the non-system partition will begin immediately. If you are checking system partition, you will see a message stating that it cannot be completed at this time.

This is normal because the system partition is being used by the operating system. Click the button Disk check schedule. To run the scan, you must restart your computer. After the computer restarts, the disk check will be performed before the operating system starts.

Run disk check from the command line

Below is an example of running a partition check C from the command line.

Note. In Windows Vista, the command line is required.

As in the case of scanning the system partition from the GUI, after running this command you will see a message indicating that the scan cannot be completed.

Enter Y and restart your computer to start checking.

Additional information about the utility's command line parameters chkdsk you can get it by running it with the key /? , or on this page.

Run a disk check if the system won't boot

If the operating system does not boot due to errors on the disk, you can check the disk using the Windows installation disk.

Windows XP

If the problem occurs in Windows XP, use the Recovery Console. After booting from the installation disk into the console, run the command

For more information about the Recovery Console, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

• Installing and using the Recovery Console in Windows XP
• Enable automatic administrator login when using the Recovery Console

Windows Vista

1. Boot from the installation disk Windows Vista.
2. Select your language options and click Next.
3. Click the button System Restore.
4. Select the system with the problem and click the button Next.
5. In the window with a selection of recovery options, select Command line.
6. At the command prompt, enter the command
   

For more information about restoring your system using the installation disc, see Windows Vista Help: Startup Repair FAQ.

Hard drive diagnostics using third-party programs

If after checking the hard drive with the utility chkdsk If you continue to experience critical errors related to your equipment, it is worth carrying out more thorough testing using specialized programs. As a rule, hard drive manufacturers' utilities or programs such as Victoria or MHDD.

Attention! Before testing your hard drive using third-party programs, you must back up all your data.

Hard drive manufacturer utilities

Diagnostic utilities may be on the CD that came with your hard drive. In any case, they can be downloaded from the hard drive manufacturer's website. Links to some manufacturers' download pages are provided below.

• Western Digital: Data Lifeguard Tools (you must select the disk model).
• Seagate: SeaTools.
• Hitachi: Drive Fitness Test.
• Samsung: Shdiag.

Diagnostic tools from other manufacturers can be found on their websites.

Victoria

program Victoria, designed for in-depth testing of the hard drive condition, can be found at this link on the website

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 see 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 named 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 package, 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:

1. Control
2. Defragmentation
3. Testing
4. Disk Cleanup
5. Removing Internet Traces
6. Deleted files
7. 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 conclusion

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.

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