Windows has built-in tools to do this, or you can use one of the third-party tools mentioned in the linked guide above. Keep an eye on your hard drive by using one or more of these six methods to check your hard drive regularly. There are a variety of ways to check hard drive health.

This gives you time to ensure all files are backed up properly and that you’re ready to move to a new drive when the time comes.

However, if you know what to look for, you can discover the early signs so that you’re not caught off guard. Sadly, hard drives often seem to fail out the blue with zero warning. Right-click an item and select “Properties” for more details.However, if you’re worried about any hardware, expand the appropriate item. If all’s well, you won’t see anything, which is good. Press Win + X and select “Device Manager.”.A less-commonly-known benefit is seeing specific events (like you’d find in “Event Viewer”) for individual hardware items. While Device Manager isn’t going to give you too much in-depth data about your PC’s health, it will let you know if a device isn’t being recognized properly by your computer. This could be an early sign of something going wrong with your PC’s operating system or hardware. However, numerous errors or seeing the same error or warning repeatedly means it’s worth researching to see what the error code or event ID means. Or, a Window service not responding at the exact right moment may throw an error, even though it responds correctly just a second later. Something as simple as network conflict for a few seconds can result in an error. It’s important to note that not every error or warning is reason for concern.

Install pc health check