Health of an hard disk is very important. Unless you check temperature, speed, errors of hard drives using monitoring tools from time to time, loss of data can cause you a nightmare. Simple solutions like providing cooling fans and ambient room temperature/space give you less shock, if your data is important.

Check your Hard Disk for Errors with Windows Utility (Chkdsk.exe)

If you are a Windows user, Chkdsk.exe is a free utility that comes pre-built into Windows 7/Vista/XP/8 to check your hard disk for any bad sectors. The simple way of running this tool is to launch Windows Explorer, right click the drive and choose Properties.

Switch to the Tools tab and click “Check Now” button under Error checking. Select “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” to perform a thorough disk check and fix any recoverable sectors.

In Windows 8, you can do the same from “File Explorer”. When you try to scan, sometimes it gives a message that its not necessary. In that case you can just skip the process altogether.

S.M.A.R.T Monitoring Technology for Modern Drives

The simple full form of the above acronym is Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This technology continuously monitors lots of parameters like read and write error rates, seek error rates, spin up time, temperature and much more. Some software programs warn you when some of these parameters are degrading.

But even with this programs and technology, its best to scan for bad (unreadable) blocks of data with either HDDScan, HD Tune, Ariolic’s Disk Scanner atleast once a month.

Important :

Even with all the above tools, the best strategy to overcome a hard disk failure is data-back up from time to time using backup software.

Free Hard Drive Health Monitoring Tools and Diagnostic Programs

CrystalDiskInfo program’s interface displays your drives health status and temperature sensor data (where available) in a bar along the top of the window. The software works with many branded HDDs and SSDs as well as many external drives.

For a complete list of free health monitoring tools for hard drives and their download links, you can follow the article below.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-health-monitoring-utility.htm

Recently on computeractive.co.uk, an user asked a question regarding the life span of his hard disks. He has two external hard disks both running above the ‘safe’ operating range of temperatures – between 5 and 35˚C. He has a program that displays hard disk temperature by which he could check his hard drive health status. He asks whether high temperatures (54˚C and above) can shorten the life of his disks?

The answer according to the author was that, long-term exposure to abnormal temperatures could significantly reduce the life of a disk. So if it’s an old disk, its better to clear out the dust from time to time and ensure that the cooling fans are turned properly. Also its suggested to put the drives in a new position, with plenty of airflow around it. Also running the backups in the night, could reduce the overload, when the ambient temperature is cooler.

The above case study makes it clear that you need to check the health status of your drives from time to time to avoid sudden pitfalls. When in doubt it’s best to use free health monitoring tools like CrystalDiskInfo and other lot to know the present status of your valuable hardware.