Just like the way you see an engine in a car, the hard drive is the soul of your computer, thus; its health must be kept extremely high to avoid loss. It is wise to check hard disk health regularly to ensure there is no data loss in case of any crush. There are many ways of checking hard disk health in windows 10 as we shall discuss below.
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Perform BIOS check
Computers with a modern motherboard allow you to do a hard disk check via BIOS check. To do this, follow the simple steps below.
- Reboot your computer
- On power on again, continue pressing the “Delete”, “F2”, “F12”, or any other button applicable to your computer. Hint: the computer will display the buttons related to the options you want.
- In the BIOS tab, you are supposed to make the first check to know whether the hard disk in question is being detected in the system.
- Hard disk health is usually seen from the Diagnostic window. Just allow the computer to make the checks, sometimes it takes time but not too long, so wait for the check.
Related article: How to recover lost data or files on a Hard Disk
Optimize and Defrag in Windows 10
This technique helps in checking a slow hard disk to see how fragmented it is. To do this, follow the steps below.
- Search for Windows 10 defragmentation tool by typing “defrag” in the start menu search bar
- When the results appear, click on “Defragment and Optimize Drives”
- Then you will have to select the drive you wish to operate in
- Click Analyze. If Fragmentation is detected, ensure to click “Optimize”
Use WMIC (Command-line)
Another advanced way to check hard disk health may be through the command prompt using the WMIC. The command-line prompt is a stronger tool that allows you to do a couple of tasks using commands. Life would really get easier around your computer if you learned those simple administrative commands. However, let us get along with this using the following steps;
- Hold down Win + R to launch the Run dialogue.
- Type CMD and click OK.
- When the CMD (Dark screen) launches, type WMIC and hit enter. The directory will change to root
- Next, type “diskdrive get status” and hit enter. The status of your hard disk will be displayed immediately.
Using CHKDSK tool
Another way to check the hard disk health in Windows 10 is by using the chkdsk command-line utility. This stands for Check Disk and is used to check the file system plus the health of your hard disk. To run this, follow the steps below;
- Launch the command-line prompt and type chkdsk c:
- This will check all files in read mode and provide a summary of the issues at hand.
- This tool will also notify you with a comment in case there is a bad sector on your hard disk