Last updated: July 16, 2022
Le Hard disk is a very important part of your computer. Indeed, to fully understand, we must go back to the basics, that is to say how memory works on a computer.
We will then have two types of memory, the RAM et storage memory. RAM is the amount of memory available to allow applications to run smoothly on your computer.
But here, what will interest us is more precisely the storage memory with the hard drive which is simply the place where absolutely all the applications, photos, videos, etc. are stored!
As you can imagine, this is an extremely important place that we do not want to see break down, otherwise we would lose all our data if we had not made other backups.
So first always make backups important files. But in parallel with that, we will also give you some tips to ensure that you can know the exact health of the hard drive of your machine.
Run a diagnostic from the BIOS
The first thing you can do is use your BIOS to be able to make a complete inventory of your hard drive.
As long as you are using a relatively modern motherboard, you can run hard drive checks in the BIOS. So, the first step, it will be to launch this famous BIOS.
For this you must turn off your computer. Once this is done start your computer again and hit the key F2, F10, F12 or Delete while it is restarting.
Please note, depending on your computer, it will restart more or less quickly and we therefore advise you to press the key several times to ensure that the BIOS starts before your computer starts normally.
Once in the BIOS, Once you have arrived on this BIOS screen, all you will have to do is find the line which directly concerns your hard drive (the exact instructions will depend on the manufacturer of your motherboard). Go to it and you can run a diagnosis to find out its state of health.
Do regular defragmentations
The following advice is not strictly speaking for check the status of your hard drive, but rather to do the regular maintenance of the latter. Indeed, a lot of information is stored on a hard drive.
Then they are erased, then replaced or even moved. This leaves a lot of waste behind and very often, what we will advise is to make a defragment your hard drive.
For this, there is nothing very complicated to do, Windows even directly offering a defragmentation tool.
- type defragmentation in the search bar (bottom left, right of the Start menu).
- Choose the drive to defragment.
- Click on Analyze et Optimize their campaigns.
Moreover, if you are tired of launching it by hand, you can even set the time and frequency of these defragmentations so that they are done automatically by your machine!
Use the CHKDSK tool
This tool is probably the most complicated to launch in this tutorial. Indeed, to do this, you must go to the search vbar of your computer and type “ cmd To open the control console.
Once this is done (you must have administrator rights to use this console), you can type CHKDSK. Then, a scan of your hard drive will start automatically and tell you if there are any worrying points.
Use third-party software
But if the control console scares you a little, you can achieve a similar and even more accurate result by using third-party software to scan the health of your hard drive.
One of those third-party software that seems to be trending right now is CrystalDiskInfo which is not only very easy to use, but which is also devilishly precise and which should therefore easily make you happy.
Once installed, its interface is extremely simple! Indeed, this application asks you for the disk you want to scan and you will then have all the information you dreamed of at your disposal, whether it is the general condition of the disk, its temperature or even its state of health.
The best part about this whole thing is that this software is completely free and it hardly takes up any space on your computer. Therefore, we can say that you would be greatly wrong to miss this one as it could become very useful for you.