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  • Hard drive test software. How to find out the condition and health of a hard drive, how to look at SMART readings (HDD, SSD) and estimate how long the drive will last

Hard drive test software. How to find out the condition and health of a hard drive, how to look at SMART readings (HDD, SSD) and estimate how long the drive will last

Good afternoon.

In today’s article I want to touch on the heart of the computer - the hard drive (by the way, many people call the processor the heart, but I personally don’t think so. If the processor burns out, buy a new one and there are no problems; if the hard drive burns out, then the information cannot be recovered in 99% of cases).

When do you need to check your hard drive for performance and bad sectors? This is done, firstly, when they buy a new hard drive, and secondly, when the computer is unstable: you have strange noises (); when accessing a file, the computer freezes; long copying of information from one hard drive partition to another; missing files and folders, etc.

In this article, I would like to tell you in simple language how to check a hard drive for problems, to assess its performance in the future, and sort out typical user questions along the way.

So, let's begin…

Updated 07/12/2015. Not long ago, an article appeared on the blog about restoring bad sectors (treating bad blocks) with the HDAT2 program - (I think the link will be relevant for this article). Its main difference from MHDD and Victoria is its support for almost any drive with interfaces: ATA/ATAPI/SATA, SSD, SCSI and USB.

1. What do we need?

Before starting the testing operation, in cases where the hard drive is not stable, I recommend copying all important files from the disk to other media: flash drives, external HDDs, etc. ().

1) You need a special program to test and restore the hard drive. There are a lot of similar programs, I recommend using one of the most popular - Victoria. Below are the download links

2) Next, a multi-colored program window will appear in front of us: go to the “Standard” tab. The upper right part shows the hard drives and CD-Roms that are installed in the system. Select your hard drive that you want to test. Then press the “Passport” button. If everything goes well, you will see how your hard drive model is determined. See picture below.

If the hard disk controller operates in AHCI (Native SATA) mode, SMART attributes may not be received, with the message “Get S.M.A.R.T. command… Error reading S.M.A.R.T!” The impossibility of receiving SMART data is also indicated by the “Non ATA” highlighted in red when initializing a medium whose controller does not allow the use of ATA interface commands, including requesting SMART attributes.

In this case, you need to go into the BIOS and in the Config tab->>Serial ATA (SATA)->>SATA Controller Mode Option->>change from AHCI to Compatibility. After finishing testing with the Victoria program, change the setting as it was before.

You can read more about how to change ACHI to IDE (Compatibility) in my other article:

4) Now go to the “Test” tab and click the “Start” button. In the main window, on the left, rectangles colored in different colors will begin to appear. It's best if they are all gray.

You need to focus your attention on the red and blue rectangles (the so-called bad sectors, more about them at the very bottom). It’s especially bad if there are a lot of blue rectangles on the disk; in this case, it is recommended to run the disk scan again, only with the “Remap” checkbox turned on. In this case, the Victoria program will hide the bad sectors found. In this way, hard drives that have begun to behave unstable are restored.

By the way, after such a restoration, the hard drive will not always work for a long time. If it has already begun to crumble, then I personally would not rely on the program. If there are a large number of blue and red rectangles, it’s time to think about a new hard drive. By the way, blue blocks on the new hard drive are not allowed at all! Experienced users call them bad sectors (meaning bad, unreadable). Such unreadable sectors can occur both during the manufacture of the hard drive and during its operation. After all, a hard drive is a mechanical device.

During operation, the magnetic disks in the hard drive case rotate quickly, and the read heads move above them. If there is a shock, impact of the device or a software error, it may happen that the heads hit or fall to the surface. Thus, it is almost certain that a bad sector will appear.

In general, this is not a problem and many disks have such sectors. The disk file system is capable of isolating such sectors from file copying/reading operations. Over time, the number of bad sectors may increase. But, as a rule, a hard drive often becomes unusable for other reasons before bad sectors “kill” it. Bad sectors can also be isolated using special programs, one of which we used in this article. After such a procedure, usually the hard drive begins to work more stable and better, however, how long this stability will last is unknown...

Best…

Hello, friends! In this article we will understand the topic - Hard Drive Diagnostics. The reason for writing this article was a message from relatives - our operating system has been installed for a maximum of two months, after which glitches begin and we have to reinstall it. Even after I installed Windows 7 for them, complaints began. I had no doubt about the operating system. It has already been installed on more than 10 computers. I tested the RAM, replaced the thermal paste on the processor, cleaned the system of dust - nothing. Then I tested the entire system using the system stability test (functions of the AIDA64 program). Everything is okay.

After repeated successful testing, enlightenment came. Checking the hard drive completely slipped my mind. I first diagnosed the HDD with a third-party program called HDD Regenerator. Having discovered errors (8 unreadable sectors), I ran the check again using a program from the manufacturer Western Digital. The latter confirmed the malfunction and the hard drive was sent to a service center under warranty. Read on to learn how to diagnose your hard drive...

Diagnostics using the operating system is what can and should be used first. To do this, open the main Start menu and select Computer. Right-click on the section to bring up the context menu and select Properties

Disk Properties opens. Go to the tab Service and in the section Checking for errors press the button Check

This will be Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows.

The WinDlg_v1_28.zip archive will be downloaded, which can be opened using the 7-zip or WinRar program in the same way as a file with the rar extension. Unpack and run the Setup.exe file.

When finished, click Ready

Launch the SeaTools program again

A search is performed for supported drives. Need to wait a little

Then, accept the license agreement again

To diagnose a hard drive, the Short and Long universal tests are sufficient

To be safe, choose Long lasting universal and wait for it to finish. If the test does not pass, follow the instructions and if the program does not fix the disk, bring it under warranty.

In the Basic tests menu there is an item called Repair all. I have not tried this function. I’ll try as soon as I get a suitable hard drive.

Restoring the Seagate HDD

10_21_2013 A few months ago, bring a 160 GB Seagate hard drive without warranty. A long-term universal test produced an error. When connecting to another computer, I was able to copy all the important information from this disk without any problems.

To restore functionality we used Additional tests

A warning window opened saying that you can activate Additional tests using the key F8

By clicking on F8, the window closed and the Additional tests section appeared. Since our data was saved, I chose Full erase (SATA)

Another warning popped up

Scrolling the screen in this message with the slider, it was discovered that to start a complete erase, you need to press F8. After pressing, erasing started.

When the process was completed, I ran the Long-Term Universal Test again. The test was passed. After that, we reinstalled the production system image using Norton Ghost. And until this moment no one complained.

Conclusion

In the article hard drive diagnostics You learned how to check your hard drive (HDD) for errors. Here we looked at two methods: checking with built-in Windows tools and checking with special utilities from manufacturers. In a combat situation, I like to use diagnostic utilities. Since this, for me, is 100% an option. If the disk passes the test, everything is fine. Otherwise, we will take it for repair under warranty. This is why in the article on choosing a hard drive I attach such importance to the warranty. It is necessary that she be 3 years old. This is a whole 3 years without a headache. Naturally, it is necessary to treat the hard drive well throughout the warranty period, since the service center pays close attention to scratches.

The main thing I want to convey to you is. Hard drives are consumables. Like cartridges for a printer. You need to have at least two copies of your important data on two different drives. For example, on an internal and external hard drive. One fails, buy a new one, restore the data from the backup one and you are happy again. In order not to buy often, look at the same guarantee. I wish it was longer. Another great option is to use Windows 7 archiving.

I have not encountered any problems with Samsung hard drives. I couldn't find any utilities specifically for these disks. If anyone has information, please share in the comments. For now I will check them with a utility from Seagate or WD.

Or removable USB HDD devices are almost the most common. That is why comprehensive measures for checking the hard drive should be given priority attention. Now we will try to briefly consider what HDD checking is in several main areas, and we will give an understanding of the basics of the methodology for correcting errors of various types.

Why do errors occur on the hard drive?

There are many reasons for failures, both in software and in physical terms. First of all, this includes a sudden power outage, which is accompanied by a short-term increase in voltage. And if you consider that at that moment, say, data was being copied, then it becomes clear that errors cannot be avoided.

Something similar is observed in the event of an incorrect shutdown of the operating system, when a computer terminal or laptop is forcibly turned off by long pressing the power button.

It’s good that the next time you turn it on, the standard program for checking the HDD, which is initially present in any Windows OS, starts automatically. True, not everything is so simple here either. The fact is that the HDD check can start again and again during subsequent system boots. This is due to the fact that the “native” application simply cannot fix system errors on the hard drive automatically. How to get rid of the constant launch of this process will be discussed a little later.

HDD check: main directions

Before we begin to consider the operation of numerous hard drive testing and error correction tools, let’s consider the main directions that are provided for the comprehensive verification system.

For example, the simplest method is considered to be viewing detailed information about the device. Today there are quite a lot of different utilities like Everest, CPU-Z or CPUID Hardware Monitor. It must be said that such programs provide the most detailed characteristics of the device, and at startup they even check the speed of the HDD (or rather, the spindle speed).

Another direction is testing the hard drive for system errors with a view to subsequently correcting them. In this case, the HDD is checked for bad sectors.

This process is somewhat reminiscent of defragmentation, only in the case of defragmentation of the hard drive, frequently used files and applications are moved to the fastest areas of the HDD (with a change in the physical rather than logical address). Checking the HDD for bad sectors works in a similar way. The program itself reads the current address from the damaged sector, and then rewrites it into a normally functioning one. As is already clear, in this case the logical address remains unchanged.

The third priority is to check the surface of the disk, because hard drives have a limited service life, and physical damage simply cannot be avoided. It is clear that by the end of its service life the hard drive may simply crumble, and in most cases it will have to be thrown away. Although, if the damage is not too serious, you can restore the hard drive, for example, by using special recovery utilities. We will consider them separately.

It goes without saying that you cannot ignore data recovery on inoperative hard drives. Actually, this is often done by various federal services when investigating computer crimes committed by hackers and seizing the corresponding equipment from them. But let's not get into the weeds. HDD sectors can also be checked by an ordinary user. The main thing is the presence of a set of special utilities.

Checking HDD and fixing errors using Windows

Now a few words about the built-in tools of Windows operating systems. They also include HDD checking. Windows 7, for example, is no different from its predecessors and successors (XP, Vista, 8, 10).

This tool is called from the usual “Explorer” by right-clicking the manipulator (computer mouse) on the corresponding disk or logical partition. Properties are selected in the menu, after which you go to the appropriate tabs, where you can carry out maintenance.

When calling such a service, it is strongly recommended to set parameters that, when activated, will scan the HDD. Windows will also be able to automatically correct system errors. True, this approach may not always help. It happens that the system issues a warning that it is not possible to automatically correct errors.

In this case, it is better to use the command line or the “Run” menu, where a variety of commands are written depending on what exactly needs to be done. The simplest command of this type is “chkdisk c: /f” (testing with automatic correction of system errors). For NTFS file systems, you can use "chkntfs /x c:". By the way, it is manipulations of this type that allow you to get rid of the annoying check of the hard drive when rebooting the computer terminal.

In general, it is better to read reference information about using this or that command, because checking the HDD can be done in completely different ways, depending on what letters will be entered after entering the main command.

Informer programs

As for information applications, you can find quite a lot of them. As mentioned above, the most well-known are utilities like CPU-Z or Everest. But these are, so to speak, general purpose programs.

CrystalDiscInfo is considered to be the most acceptable and most powerful utility that combines the functions of an informer and a scanner. By the way, it is capable of not only displaying information on the device, but also even controlling some basic parameters, say, changing the spindle speed.

Programs for checking HDDs for bad sectors

Speaking about what a program for checking HDDs for bad sectors is, it is worth mentioning such a powerful utility as Victoria, created by a Belarusian developer.

The application can work both in standard mode in Windows environment and in DOS emulation. What is most interesting is that it is in DOS that the utility shows its maximum capabilities.

Checking the disc surface

Testing the hard drive surface (Surface Test mode) can be used in standard Windows OS tools, or you can use specialized utilities such as HDDScan.

It is noteworthy that the software package itself is available in the form of a portable version and does not require installation on a hard drive. It goes without saying that you can start the scanning process even from a regular flash drive, using the default settings or applying your own (they are located in the Process section).

Of course, the program will be able to identify problems with the integrity of the HDD surface, but it will not be able to revive a damaged hard drive. But there is a way out here too.

Reanimation programs

Even a damaged hard drive or removable USB HDD can be resuscitated thanks to a unique development called HDD Regenerator, which, when it first appeared, caused quite a stir in the field of modern computer technology.

According to the developers themselves, this application is capable of restoring physically damaged sectors of the HDD surface using magnetization reversal technology. There is no point for the average user to delve into all the intricacies of the technological process. The main thing is that the program works perfectly. From the outside, this may seem strange: how can you remagnetize a hard drive using software? However, in combination with the use of physical methods, this process has become possible for use in stationary computer systems. The hard drive doesn't even need to be dismantled.

Data recovery

With data recovery, the situation is somewhat worse. This is understandable, because not every utility is capable of working like HDD Regenerator.

Of course, we can recommend using some software packages like Acronis True Image. But such a utility works on the principle of creating a backup copy. In case of damage to the hard drive or accidental deletion of information, it is better to use tools like Recuva, PC Inspector File Recovery or Recover My Files. But they cannot provide a complete guarantee of data recovery, for example, in case of physical damage to the HDD.

By and large, if the hard drive is large enough, it is recommended to create backup copies of data in advance. Then you won’t have to look for specialized utilities or rack your brains over how to recover lost information.

Comprehensive solutions for HDD testing

In order to carry out a comprehensive check, including promptly obtaining information on the device, actions that include a complete check and correction of HDD failures and damage, data recovery, etc., it is better to use several software packages together. For example, in the most extreme case, the combination might look like this:

  • information stage - CrystalDiscInfo;
  • full HDD check - Victoria;
  • surface test - HDD Scan;
  • recovery of a damaged hard drive - HDD Regenerator.

Which program is better?

It is not possible to say which program for checking HDD or removable media is the best, since almost all utilities have their own specific direction.

In principle, among the main applications for checking and automatically correcting errors, the Victoria package (high-quality HDD error checking) can be especially highlighted, and in terms of disk recovery, the championship undoubtedly belongs to HDD Regenerator.

Conclusion

We briefly talked about what HDD checking is and what some types of software products are designed for. However, in conclusion, it is worth noting that it is not recommended to bring your hard drive to an extreme state; you need to check it at least once a month. This approach will avoid many problems in the future.

In principle, you can set up an automatic scan of the hard drive on a schedule, even using the standard Windows Task Scheduler, so as not to call the process manually every time. You can simply choose the right time, but here you need to take into account the fact that when the testing process is running, it will be extremely difficult to work with the system.

By the way, even installing a conventional uninterruptible power supply or stabilizer will protect the hard drive from the harmful effects associated with power surges or power outages.

  • 1. How to check your hard drive?
  • 2. Utilities for checking the system hard drive
  • 3. Other ways to check the hard drive for damage
  • 4. Disk analysis using the command line

A computer's hard drive is the main block of its memory, the part responsible for storing, distributing and moving information. Like any physical media, a hard drive has the ability to fail and become damaged, which is critically unacceptable in cases where vital information is stored on it. Checking your hard drive for functionality is the first thing you need to know how to do when purchasing a computer. We will help you understand the intricacies of this process.

How to check your hard drive?

The first thing we need to do is copy the existing important files to another physical medium, be it a Flash card or a third-party HDD. If your SDD or HDD makes strange sounds, clicks, or simply raises doubts about its functionality, you can resort to various methods of checking it before taking it to a specialized service. There are a great many different applications for checking a disk for bad sectors, software compatibility, hardware, etc. Where to start checking?

Utilities for checking the system hard drive

Microsoft is famous for its large toolkit for working with various system components, and one of them is the standard built-in CHKDSK program for checking and repairing bad sectors. In this case, we can check the disk without installing third-party applications. If the disk file system has errors, chkdsk is our assistant in finding and eliminating them.

Main functions of the built-in utility:

  1. Finding and fixing errors in NTFS/FAT file systems
  2. Identification of physically damaged bad sectors
  3. Checking third-party media (USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.) for faults

Starting a system scan is very simple: open the standard “Run” window in the “Start” menu on “Windows”, or, if you do not have basic skills in interacting with the command line, find the menu we need through “Explorer”. For this:

  • Find the “My Computer” section in Explorer;
  • Right-click on the media that requires verification
  • Open the section “Properties->Service”;
  • Click the top button “Run check”. This command only works if you have administrator rights;

  • We restart the computer, while checking the disk, Windows automatically searches for problems and fixes the problems found;
  • If there are no problems, the disk will be checked without fixing, but if there are problems, be prepared for the fact that checking the disk will take quite a long time;
  • The system checks third-party physical media immediately, without rebooting.

Note that the built-in Windows tool performs only a superficial check, and is far from completely accurate in detecting problems with media. To conduct a more thorough and in-depth analysis, you will need to download and install third-party utilities, the most popular of which we will consider below.

Other ways to check the hard drive for damage

Useful utility utilities for checking disk health and troubleshooting:

Seagate Seatools is an equally useful utility, which, however, does not have the versatility of the previous one, and is only compatible with Seagate hard drives; for other models, the analysis will be fragmentary or completely erroneous. Using Stools is quite simple - you select items for diagnostics, and the program performs automatic testing. If the analysis is completed successfully, PASS will be displayed, in other cases you will see the message FAIL. Issues such as:

  • HDD file system errors;
  • Problems with the Windows MBR disk bootloader;
  • Hardware conflict and Windows driver incompatibility;
  • Availability of Bad Sectors;
  • The presence of Trojans, viruses and other applications that disrupt the operation of the disk.

In many cases, Seagate Tools automatically fixes problems found; in rare cases, it requires user intervention. It is worth noting that you will need to be patient before checking and correcting errors. A painstaking analysis of a hard drive is not a momentary task, and the duration of the process increases in proportion to the volume of recorded memory.

Disk analysis using the command line

This is how you can verify that your hard drive is working using simple combinations. The disk should be checked when you just bought a new computer, as well as after errors in installing programs or moving a large number of files. If you rarely use your computer, it is worth turning it on sometimes to overclock the physical media - each hard drive has a certain write-overwrite resource, and the method of writing data to a large media does not provide for static storage.

Even if the hard drive is fully operational and the manufacturer is reliable, it is recommended to always save copies of the most important files on third-party media. Although it is possible to recover lost or damaged files using some programs, this method is not absolute, and even a computer service center will not always help you recover erased data from physically damaged media.

Or removable hard drives are almost the most important for ensuring the functionality of the entire computer system and proper storage of information without data loss in unforeseen situations. HDD operation should be monitored regularly. Let's look at what programs for diagnosing a hard drive exist today and what they are capable of.

What is hard drive diagnostics?

First, let's look at some of the most important aspects. Hard drive monitoring and diagnostics include several basic processes. The most significant here are the following: preliminary collection of information about the state of the hard drive (monitoring), checking the hard drive (scanning), error correction and data recovery (if errors cannot be corrected using software).

In principle, the utility programs themselves for diagnosing a hard drive should be divided according to their direct functions (informants, scanners, “doctors” and restorers). They will be discussed in more detail a little later, although today there are many software packages that combine all these functions.

The most common HDD problems

When considering the question of what the best programs for diagnosing a hard drive are, it is worth dwelling on the most common problems and errors that they can correct.

First of all, the most common are system errors that can occur when the Windows OS itself malfunctions, applications are not shut down correctly, files and folders are incorrectly copied or moved to other areas of the HDD, a sudden power outage, etc. In principle, most Such problems are identified and eliminated by hard drive diagnostic programs.

It's another matter when the user is faced with a situation of physical damage to the surface of the hard drive. Here the problem is much more complicated. It is sometimes possible to transfer information programmatically to another area or section, but, unfortunately, damaged areas cannot be restored. If there are too many of them, in the worst case you will have to change the hard drive. Of course, you can try to restore some of the information yourself, but in especially serious cases, say, after a temperature jump when the hard drive melted, such a procedure without the intervention of specialists will simply be impossible.

Information Preview

Now let's look at specialized utilities that allow you to collect and view complete information about the status, operation and main characteristics of the hard drive. According to experts and users, the most popular utilities are Everest, CPU-Z, CrystalDiscInfo, etc.

Any hard drive diagnostic program of this type allows you to view a full report, and it will contain much more information than in standard Windows OS reports, although using such tools you can still see something.

By the way, it is wrong to believe that monitoring applications fix any errors or problems. They were initially created only to view all equipment parameters, and not to influence their settings in any way. In this regard, only the CrystalDiscInfo utility can control some HDD parameters.

However, some parameters can be viewed and adjusted even when accessing the BIOS before directly starting the system. But even there the information is far from complete, and changing parameters will affect, say, a fan or something else. But sometimes you will have to apply some settings of hard drive controllers.

Checking HDD using Windows OS

As for the “operating systems” of the Windows family, there is a minimum set for checking the hard drive for errors, as well as for correcting them. But this only applies to system errors.

In terms of monitoring, information can be viewed by calling the “Properties” menu from the context menu by right-clicking on the “My Computer” icon. More complete information is contained in the DirectX dialog box, which is called up from the Run menu by entering the dxdiag command. In any case, the information contained in these reports cannot be compared to what free utilities offer.

In Windows OS, the “native” program for diagnosing hard drives is called very simply. To do this, in the standard “Explorer”, right-click on the drive or partition letter, and again select the “Properties” line from the drop-down menu. On the “General” (or “Service”) tab there is a special “Run check” button.

In the menu that appears, you can check the box next to the automatic line. If this is not done, the system will simply display a message stating that errors have been detected and need to be corrected. In some cases, it will not be possible to fix problems even with automatic error correction, and with each subsequent boot of the OS, an intrusive message will appear stating that one of the disks requires checking. Agree, it’s quite inconvenient, especially since even a specified hard drive surface test takes a lot of time. Here it is better to use special programs for diagnosing a hard drive with advanced capabilities. By the way, the effect of their use will be felt immediately. Any user will be able to see the result even with, so to speak, an inexperienced eye.

Hard drive diagnostics: programs for testing HDDs for bad sectors

Naturally, among the software for monitoring the operation or basic parameters of hard drives of any type, you can find a lot of paid, shareware or completely free utilities. What’s most interesting is that, as practice shows, free applications are often not inferior to licensed software and cope with the functions assigned to them quite effectively.

Among all the variety, it is worth highlighting utilities such as Norton Disc Doctor, HDD Scan, Hard Disc Sentinel, the same CrystalDiscInfo application, as well as CheckDisc or something else like that. For Western Digital hard drives, a special utility called Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, developed specifically for WD hard drives, is perfect.

Interestingly, some utilities even come in portable versions and take up only a few megabytes of space.

All utilities of this type have a fairly simple interface that is understandable to any user, in which you just need to select the desired drive and set several scanning and error correction parameters. In principle, the same Disc Doctor of “grandfather” Norton allows you to specify a disk or partition, as well as use parameters for checking the hard drive for bad sectors and automatically correcting errors. Separately, in the advanced settings, you can set the Surface of the HDD).

Checking the HDD for physical damage

Unfortunately, physical damage to the surface of the HDD or removable hard drive is a very common problem. This may be due to dust, overheating, short circuits in electrical circuits, etc.

Checking the physical condition of the hard drive is quite simple. You just need to seek help from the appropriate programs and applications, which will detect problems, if any, within a few minutes.

Principles of correcting HDD errors in physically damaged sectors

In principle, testing the surface of disks can be done by some standard HDD utility or diagnostic program for an external hard drive. That's not the point. The main thing is that such utilities can rewrite information (checksums) from damaged sectors to spare areas of the disk. Thus, an interesting effect is achieved. In fact, the logical address of the sector does not change, although in fact the physical location on the hard drive is completely different. In general, almost all applications of this type use this principle. In addition, most of them are designed for completely different file systems and partition table formats.

Victoria: hard drive diagnostic program

It is worth mentioning the Victoria program, which is unique in its kind. It truly has the most powerful capabilities in its field. True, some experts recommend using the version that runs on DOS. Well, in some cases this is a justifiable step.

The application itself was developed by the Belarusian programmer S. O. Kazantsev and has established itself in the computer world at a very high level. It is not surprising that in the West it is now used very often. It must be said that this utility is a multifunctional package that combines the ability to monitor and test hard drives of any type and any manufacturer, the ability to automatically correct errors and restore data even in the event of very significant damage to hard drives.

Although for an uninitiated user this software package may seem somewhat overloaded with capabilities and settings, professionals appreciate it. Perhaps nothing better has been created today, since the program itself can be classified as All-In-One (“all-in-one”).

Data recovery from damaged HDDs

Of course, you can restore data using the Victoria utility, but few ordinary users will understand it. In this case, something simpler should be recommended.

For example, the best hard drive data recovery programs include many powerful utilities. You can use applications like HDD Regenerator.

As the developers of this package themselves state, they have found a unique way of using certain signal sequence algorithms that make it possible to literally restore physically damaged sectors of hard drives, not simply by copying information to other sections, but using the magnetization reversal technique for this. This achieves the effect when information from the damaged area does not disappear anywhere, but is read after restoration.

Naturally, if the read heads or spindle on the hard drive have failed, even the most modern programs will not help. However, in most cases, software and, as we see, even physical problems can be fixed.

Advanced BIOS Settings

As for additional settings, many programs for diagnosing hard drives can sometimes produce errors during the analysis of the hard drive or simply not see it.

In this case, you need to change the SATA controller parameter in the BIOS, most often just change from AHCI to IDE. This should help.

The most common myths and misconceptions

Very often, inexperienced users using diagnostic programs or viewing the parameters of a hard drive or fan in the BIOS for the first time panic, saying that the temperature is too high (for example, 40 degrees), the hard drive will “fly” in this operating mode. Nothing like this! For almost all hard drives, the optimal operating temperature range is from 35 to 45 degrees Celsius. Even a value of 50 degrees is not critical for many hard drives. It's worse when the temperature drops below 25 degrees, which is when the probability of hard drive failure is much higher. However, this is extremely rare, except when working in the cold (I think hardly anyone is smart enough to do this).

Hard drive diagnostics. Which program is better?

So, although briefly, we looked at the question of what hard drive diagnostics are. The program (which is better is up to the user) designed for analysis, testing and error correction, in principle, can be anything. What to use - a specialized or highly targeted product? The answer to this question depends on what exactly the application needs to be able to do. Some people prefer separate programs, while others tend to use packages that combine all the features for working with HDDs.

For inexperienced users, simple free utilities are suitable, especially since even portable versions do not “weigh” that much and have “smart” S.M.A.R.T scanning functions. without damage to the system. But for professionals, the best in its field, of course, is the Victoria program. This is not discussed.

Conclusion

In general, if you understand testing hard drives and monitoring their condition, you can finally add only one thing: in order to prevent catastrophic situations from occurring, at least some kind of hard drive diagnostic program should be used regularly. In some cases, even simply removing dust using a regular vacuum cleaner will help (of course, without fanaticism). As statistics show, for those who check the hard drive at least once a month and monitor the general condition of the computer or laptop, the percentage of HDD failure is much lower than for users who never think about it, but try to correct the situation when everything will go almost to the extreme.