A program for checking an external hard drive. How to check a hard drive for bad sectors

Most old hard drives contain erroneous records, etc. . Some of them lead to sad consequences; when will this happen to you hard drive- It's a question of time.

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 your hard drive and treating bad sectors

HDD Regenerator - testing utility hard drive, professional tool for diagnostics, search and correction of errors. The word "Regenerator" clarifies: the program is not only capable of detecting possible malfunctions, structure errors and bad sectors, but 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 full-fledged tool for . If the information is not readable, regeneration will allow you to bypass bad blocks and read problematic files.

In order to determine HDD status, you must pass a special test. Additional information can be retrieved. 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 one free program to test the hard drive and monitor 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 state 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 different kinds 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. operating room Windows 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, you can use CHKDSK to fix errors on various devices storage: not only on the hard drive, but also on a flash drive and 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 functions. 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 has green color, 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 promptly 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. Too much heat, as a rule, even 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 features 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.

The data structure on the hard disk may be damaged. This happens by 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 very convenient tool, which allows you to test your hard drive, as well as 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 figure 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 color range, adding or diluting 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. 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 one significant drawback— 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's interface is more user-friendly than 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.

Good morning everyone!

I think that many users have encountered suspicious work hard disk: long copying/reading of files, brakes, loading up to 100%, clicking, inability to read any files, etc.

This behavior of the disk may indicate serious problems with it. In order to determine what is wrong with it, you have to resort to specialized service utilities.

In this article I want to highlight a few of the best utilities that can view S.M.A.R.T readings. (special hard drive self-monitoring technology), check the disk surface for the presence of bad blocks and try to restore its functionality (that is, try to reassign bad sectors to backup ones, see the link below for more details).

What is a bad block, how to check a disk using the Victoria utility (in detail for beginners, with examples and screenshots), see this article -

6 best utilities for checking a disk for bad blocks

Victoria/Victoria

Developer's website: http://hdd-911.com/

One of the best utilities for checking and treating bad blocks on your hard drive. The program performs testing, diagnostics, and treatment of the disk at a low level. In addition to HDD, Victoria supports other types of media: FDD, CD/DVD, USB/Flash/SCSI, and also “sees” drives under Windows via API and ports.

Note: I described how to work with Victoria in one of my previous articles, the link to it is provided just above.

Main features:

support for IDE/SATA controllers;
ability to view S.M.A.R.T. disk;
the ability to control acoustic noise;
tests to check the mechanics and surface of the disc;
obtaining full technical disk information;
ability to work under Windows and DOS;
Supports work on laptops;
support for low-level HDD formatting;
Benchmark functions.

HDDScan

One of best programs to check hard drives under Windows. Allows you to quickly assess the condition of the hard drive, check the drive for bad sectors, view S.M.A.R.T. attributes.

In addition, the program allows you to manage power, adjust the acoustic mode, and monitor the temperature of the drive (data can be displayed on the taskbar).

Main features:

Support for SSD drives;
Support HDD with interfaces: ATA/SATA, SCSI, USB, FireWire or IEEE 1394;
Drive test in linear verification, linear reading and linear writing modes;
Reading and analysis of identification information from hard drives with ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire/SCSI interfaces;
Changing the AAM, APM, PM parameters on drives with ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire interfaces (useful for those whose hard drive is very noisy during operation);
Works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10.

HDTA2

HDAT2 is a system utility necessary for diagnosing and “treating” hard drives. One of the main differences between this utility and “Victoria” (presented above) is its support for a much larger type of disk (note: supported interfaces: ATA/ATAPI/SATA, SSD, SCSI and USB).

HDAT2 can operate in 2 modes:

disk level: diagnostics and “treatment” of bad sectors on identified drives. By the way, in addition to diagnostics, you can get any information about the disk (which can only be obtained programmatically);
file level: search, read and check records in FAT 12, 16, 32 file systems. Ability to check, delete and restore records of bad sectors and flags in the FAT table.

Important!

I recommend using HDAT2 with boot disk or flash drives. Work from under Windows program It will most likely be incorrect. On the developer's website, use the version "CD/DVD Boot ISO image"- it must be correctly written to a flash drive/disk, like any bootable media. You can read about this in one of my articles: .

MHDD

Developer's website: http://mhddsoftware.com/

MHDD is a service utility for accurate diagnostics and repair of drives (HDD). The utility allows you to work with disks at a low level through the IDE controller ports. The program has a fairly high speed of scanning and “curing” the disk from “soft”-bad sectors.

Main functions:

accurate and very fast diagnosis of the hard drive condition, optimal algorithm fixes bad sectors;
the ability to adjust the noise from the drive (AAM);
viewing S.M.A.R.T. readings;
error logs;
the ability to delete all information on the disk without the possibility of restoring it;
an attempt to warm up the drive and test it under extreme conditions;
the ability to test several hard drives at once.

Macrorit Disk Scanner

Macrorit Disk Scanner is a good and working tool for checking your hard drive for bad sectors. By the way, I want to especially note that the utility scans the disk very quickly- 1.5-2 times faster than, say, the famous Victoria! True, it will not help “cure” the disk - it simply does not have the functionality that Victoria has.

You can scan the entire disk or a specific range of sectors (useful on large disks when scanning may take too much time).

The utility allows you to work with all popular types of drives: IDE, HDD, SSD, SCSI, FireWire, RAID, SD cards, etc.

Macrorit Disk Scanner main window

Generally, good alternative previous programs, especially when you need to quickly and easily find out the status of the disk.

Ashampoo HDD Control

Developer website: https://www.ashampoo.com/ru/rub/pin/0365/system-software/hdd-control-3

A multifunctional program for monitoring the status of all your drives in the system. Thanks to minute-by-minute monitoring of the status of your disks, the program will prevent the loss of information by warning you in time about any problems.

By the way, anyone who has used products from Ashampoo knows that their programs are designed so that any novice user can work with the program simply and easily. HDD Control is no exception to this rule; anyone who wants it can figure it out...

Main functions:

monitoring the status of drives online;
the ability to test the drive (several tests are available to get a “complete picture” of the drive’s condition);
notification of dangerous disk conditions leading to failure or possible loss of information;
possibility of disk defragmentation;
support for drives with interface: IDE, ATA, hard drives connected via USB and Firewire;
supports disks connected via RAID controllers;
viewing disk information: registration number, cache size, number of partitions, etc.;
I have an opportunity quick cleaning disk from junk files;
the ability to export data on the disk status and tests performed.

No matter how good the readings are after testing and diagnosing the disk, do not forget to back up important documents and files. As they say, once a year the stick shoots...

It’s better to spend 5 extra minutes on backup than to waste days and weeks of work.

Bad sectors are found on almost all HDDs. Especially those that are actively used for a long time. Sometimes the problem gets out of control and turns into a real disaster, destroying all data on the HDD in any partitions. To prevent this from happening, find out how to repair bad hard drive sectors at home.

What are bad sectors and why do they appear?

You can imagine a bad block as a book with the last chapter torn out. You can read it up to a certain point. But as soon as there is a gap in the pages, you will not be able to finish reading. HDD works the same way. The magnetic head reads information within the track, but in some area it encounters a damaged surface or an empty bit of information, which makes it impossible to extract the information completely.

Almost all hard drives have broken partitions. There may be one or several, and in most cases it is not scary. But over time, there are more and more of them, and they make it increasingly difficult to operate information on the HDD. Such areas can be identified by scanning the hard drive for bad sectors using special utilities.

There can be many reasons for the appearance of bad sectors:

impact of the disc or use in improper conditions;
interrupting recording by turning off the power;
overheating and temperature surges;
natural wear and tear on the heads and writing disk;
low quality products.

Here you can divide bad sectors into non-recoverable and recoverable sectors. The first are those caused by shock or overheating. They are destroyed once and cannot be restored, and information, as a rule, disappears forever. The second type of bad sectors appears as a result of an interruption in the recording process. They can be restored by simply rewriting the disc.

Over time, write and read speeds may decrease. And after a slight fall of your laptop, the disk may stop working altogether. Everything would be really bad if it weren’t possible to somehow regenerate bad blocks. The fact is that hard drives have a certain reserve area, which means a potentially larger volume than stated on the receipt. You can use the extra space to transfer contents from damaged areas to it. How to recover bad sectors of a hard drive in this way is indicated below.

Danger is near

You can notice the problem not only after a hard drive failure, but also on initial stages. You should be wary after the following signs:

Disk writing/reading speed has dropped;
unusual noise is heard when accessing the HDD;
began to overheat;
subjected to mechanical impact;
The system often crashes, and at startup chkdsk runs without permission.

As a rule, these reasons indicate the beginning of the end of your HDD. To avoid losing data, be the first to good decision there will be a backup. Transfer all the necessary files to another computer, flash drive, disk, and, if possible, set up synchronization with the cloud.

Most modern hard drives check for bad sectors themselves, without user intervention. This is both good and bad, since you cannot influence the elimination of bad blocks and learn about their appearance on system partitions.

When to scan?

You can scan your hard drive for errors at a certain frequency, which depends on the frequency of use of the computer and is calculated individually. Some people carry out scheduled computer maintenance once a month, others - once every six months.

To do this, you can use system utilities or programs to restore bad sectors of the hard drive. A scan should be performed immediately after detecting the problems listed above.

Scanning using standard tools

Starting with Windows 8, the system itself is capable of scanning disks on a schedule and thereby prolonging the operation of the HDD. You can set up a scanning schedule at: “My Computer” / “Management” (a tab will appear in the main menu when the section is active). In Windows, checking your hard drive for bad sectors can be done with the standard chkdsk program. The utility can be launched in several ways:

The work is not fundamentally different, so let’s consider the first option:

Open Command Prompt as Administrator. Right-click on the Start menu icon or just left-click bottom corner on Windows 8 and select "Command Prompt (Admin)" from the list.
If you want to scan a non-system drive, enter the command with the keys chkdsk /f /r to scan and fix the entire disk at once, and chkdsk D: /f /r to fix only partition D or any other existing one. Additionally, you can enter the /x switch to disable the volume being scanned during the scan. If you diagnose a working disk, the program will prompt you to reboot in order to complete the work without logging in.
If chkdsk finds errors in the partitions in use, it will offer to reboot and fix the sectors before the system starts.

To display all options, type help chkdsk. A list will appear showing all available keys with explanations. You can use any combinations at your discretion if you understand the essence of what is happening and possible consequences. At the end of the scan, all data about the operation will be displayed in the log.

Third party programs

In addition to the built-in chkdsk, you can use third-party programs to fix bad sectors on your hard drive. There are many software that can recover damaged partitions.

Among the popular free software, I would like to highlight Victoria. This program for recovering bad sectors of a hard drive is well known and at one time was very popular among repairmen. The Victoria program can work in both windowed and DOS mode, which allows it to be used even on dead systems to restore information.

Victoria interface

The program is perfect for recovering bad sectors of a hard drive. Victoria is intended more for experienced users, since it contains virtually no interface and does not even have a localization tool included. But this does not prevent it from working correctly with hardware and file systems.

There are quite a lot of settings, switches and different numbers, and when you open the program for the first time, it can be difficult to navigate. But by following the steps below, let's learn how to repair bad sectors on your hard drive.

Testing and Analysis

In the Smart tab of this program you can quickly assess the general condition of the disk. The score is given based on analysis different meanings given in the table. There you can view the status of each parameter separately.

For simple testing, go to the Tests tab. There are quite a lot of settings in each section, so for the initial analysis you can leave everything at default. Click on the Start button and wait until testing is completed. A complete check of the hard drive for bad sectors takes a long time. Therefore, you can safely leave testing overnight and go to bed.

Additionally, the window contains a speed graph or a color indication of sectors. You can switch the view using the Grid checkbox next to the timer.

Correcting sectors

If you don’t have time to wait for several checks, then after assessing the condition, you can immediately begin treating bad sectors of the hard drive. Victoria uses the Remap method to rewrite blocks. It reassigns bad blocks to normal ones from the spare disk space. To repair bad sectors, do the following:

During the scan, the log will display all errors found and a report on the measures taken. It also indicates in which part of the disk the problems were detected.

How to trim?

Often, bad partitions predominate at the beginning or end of the disk. The thought immediately comes to mind: “What if we don’t use the space with bad sectors?” Yes, it can be cut off and no longer used. You can find out which partition of disk space is best to cut off like this:

You should only work with the system disk in DOS mode until the OS is loaded. While the backup or restored one can be marked directly from Windows. This method is good for large HDDs. But it does not help specifically restore broken partitions on the hard drive, as happens during the remap process.

Prevention

To prevent the hard drive from “dying” in your hands, it is advisable to carry out some preventative measures. Depending on the type of equipment.

If you have a laptop:

try not to hit him;
do not shake too much, especially in work time;
Do not expose to vibrations or temperature changes.

If you have desktop computer:

do not place the system unit in a damp place;
do not allow components to overheat;
although the HDD itself is sealed, the board can be damaged by a layer of dust, so get rid of it;
Install additional cooling on the hard drive if the computer is actively used or the hard drive is unable to cool itself.

Defragmentation is a useful preventive measure for all hard drives. There are a lot of programs, both in-house and third-party, to carry it out.

Now you know how to repair bad sectors on your hard drive and maybe even be able to save valuable information on it if problems arise.

Have you started to hear extraneous creaks in the system unit? Has the system performance somehow dropped completely intolerably, although the processor and memory should not allow this to happen? Well, it's time to check the hard drive. Find out how to do this in our article.

This is quite an important matter. Besides the performance penalty, although that's certainly important, it's about your data. You don't want to one day be left without all your data simply because your drive decided to fail? Here. Therefore, it is important to check the condition of the disc and its health level more often.

Correcting errors in a timely manner also helps increase the lifespan of the disk. Whether it's a regular hard drive or an SSD, file system errors wear it out at a rapid rate, so it's important to keep it in good condition. Otherwise, the data will be lost even faster.

If you understand the importance of this event, then let's get started.

Checking using standard Windows tools

This is the simplest method and can give you quite a lot of information about the hard drive and even try to fix some errors.

Read interesting information And reliable advice in the article -

Command line

If the previous scenario of using standard Windows tools is not very effective, then the command line method can try to supplement it. Its essence is that it is launched from the bootable installation media of the system, that is, the system itself is not running and cannot block some of the requirements of the verification program.

Important! This method has one disadvantage: you need installation media, and it is desirable that it comes with the exact version of Windows that is installed on your computer.

Create bootable media and insert it into your drive or USB port. In your computer's BIOS, select to boot from this media. Wait for the operating environment to load.
When the program reaches the window labeled “Start installation,” press the Windows key combination + F10.
Enter the following command in the console window that opens: chkdsk /f. Press Enter.
The scan will start. The program will display the results right there on the command line. She will immediately try to correct all the errors found.

Simple third party software

Let's look at a few programs that will help you identify most problems with your hard drive without going into too much detail about the process.

HDDScan

Using this program, you can understand in which sectors the writing and reading speed is high, and in which - not. The program is completely universal; with its help you can diagnose anything, as long as it is an information storage device.

The principle of working with her is extremely simple: you start scanning and wait for her report on the work done, from which it is quite possible to draw some conclusions.

Crystal Disk Mark

A more narrowly focused utility, although it essentially also monitors speed. The program can’t do anything else, but based on the writing and reading speeds, you can quite understand what’s happening with the disk and how much longer it will last.

Important! It is strictly forbidden to use this program if you want to check the SSD drive. His death when using this software will be even closer: this program fills the entire space with some data, and although it is weightless and deleted without a trace, for the SSD this is also wear and tear.

More complex software

If neither standard verification tools nor simple programs you are not satisfied, then you can move on to more complex verification programs. So, let's begin.

Victoria HDD

The most common program for troubleshooting hard drive problems.

Its advantages are that there are both quick and deep scans of the disk, and also that it monitors its temperature. This is also an important indicator, but it does not affect wear as much.

HDD Regenerator

Pro tool in our article. Corrects everything it finds in its path. Its huge competitive advantage– Russification. It is therefore very easy to use, despite the impressive range of functions.

The principle of its operation is much more complex than that of other programs, and these differences clearly benefited the program. She manages to restore what others could not. Also, unlike other programs, it does not destroy your files that were in the sectors it corrects, but preserves them culturally. Well, not life, but a fairy tale.

The program has two versions - graphical and console. If you are not very knowledgeable about this topic, use the graphical one with the Russian language, everything is intuitive there. In the console, its capabilities are much wider, because pressure and prohibitions from operating system less.

Let's look at the graphical interface.

On a note! However, this program has one significant drawback - it is paid, and the trial only allows you to check it. Well, that’s good too.

Programs from hard drive manufacturers

Who, besides the manufacturers themselves, can know better how to work with hard drives? Some of these programs work only with disks of a certain brand, some - with all. Experiment.
Let's begin.

SeaTools

Essentially a simple program:

Data Lifeguard Diagnostics

This is the name of the verification program from the manufacturer WD. The functionality is approximately similar to the previous program, but has a number of advantages.

firstly, it can be used with any disk. This is a huge plus, despite the prevalence of discs of this brand;
secondly, she knows how to destroy information;
thirdly, it can simply cut off dead sectors so that the disk runs longer at the same speed, albeit with a slightly smaller volume. Definitely an extremely useful feature.

All options are in context menus. That is, to start scanning a specific disk, you just need to right-click on it (of course, in the program interface) and select the desired action. That's all the work.

We hope these methods helped you deal with the problems of your machine, repair it, or prevent damage. Good luck!