The internal storage of your PC, also known as the hard drive, is a mechanical part that may experience wear and tear over time. Have you ever heard a creaking sound coming from your laptop or CPU? It might be the sound of your hard disk rotating at unusual speeds.
Keeping track of the hard drive’s health is crucial to optimizing your PC’s speed. Slowly read and write speeds, poor processing time, and degraded storage capacity are a few telltale signs of an unhealthy hard drive.
If your Windows PC is becoming slow over time, the hard drive is causing the issue. Checking drive health at regular intervals can help you prevent such an issue.
In this blog, let’s talk about a few DIY ways to check the hard drive’s health and optimize its performance. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!
Ways To Check Hard Drive Health on Your PC
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Use CHKDSK Command
The CHKDSK command is the common way of knowing the status of your drive. It scans the hard disk and lets you know about the bad sectors of your hard drive. It is integrated with Windows and can be run using the following instructions –
– Press Windows + R to open the Run Box. Type cmd to open Command Prompt
– In the Command Prompt, Type the CHKDSK command to initiate the process
– This will initiate a deeper scan and yield insights about your storage.
– If you find errors on your hard disk, there are various extended commands for CHKDSK, such as – /f, /r, /x, or /b that can be used to fix them.
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Check for Health via Disk Properties
One of the easiest ways to scan your hard disk for errors is provided in the properties of your hard disk as an in-built feature. All you have to do is –
– Open Windows Explorer and select the drive you want to examine.
– Right-click on the drive and open Properties.
– In Properties, select Tools and click on Check
– This will prompt you to scan the drive. It is a background process; you can keep using the drive while the scan is in process.
Start the scan and wait for the results. Keep in mind that since it is a manual and Windows-integrated process, it might take a little extra time. Once the scan is completed, you will learn about the errors and how to resolve them.
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Defragmentation & Optimization
Defragmentation and optimization is another way of dealing with the slow processing speeds of your hard disk. Defragmentation is about breaking down the little fragments formed over time on your hard disk. It helps in optimizing the overall functioning of your PC.
To initiate defragmentation, you must follow the steps below –
– Open Windows Menu and type “Defrag” on the search bar.
– Open the Defragment and Optimize application from the search results
– Click on the Optimize button & the defragmentation process will start.
Once the process is completed, all the issues in your hard drives will be fixed, and you will experience enhanced processing speed and performance.
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Run Disk Check Using Advanced System Optimizer
Advanced System Optimizer is a PC optimization software that can help you make your PC fast in no time. One of the core reasons behind your hard drive not functioning to its full potential can be the fragments that have been formed over the time on the drive. Fragments are basically scattered files throughout your drive which take up a percentage of your storage unnecessarily.
The tool has multiple ways to optimize your PC’s overall performance, including your hard drive. Here’s how the tool works –
- Download and install Advanced System Optimizer on your PC
- Run the application and you will find all the options that can help you optimize your PC’s performance.
- Click on Disk Cleaner & Optimizers to find more disk cleaning options.
- Click on the Disk Optimizer option in the center of the app interface to start the process.
- Click Start Scan Now after selecting the drive you want to optimize.
Note : Make sure you do not defrag the disk partition that is in-use or has your OS installed driver as you might lose crucial data in the process. If you want to run the defragmentation anyway, make sure you save and close all the running processes.
- Let the process finish. It might take time, considering the size of your drive.
Once the process is completed, your hard drive will be clean and optimized.
These ways can help you understand how your hard disk is performing. While all of the above ways can highlight potential threats to your hard disk, Advanced System Optimizer is one such approach that can help you with the solution too.
Not to mention, running commands and defragmenting your hard disk is a lengthy process that seems tedious. On the other hand, the Advanced System Optimizer does all of it in just a few clicks, which is much more suitable from the user’s point of view.
Parting Words
All in all, what matters is that your hard drive should be recovered from all the issues. The performance of your PC might be hampered due to the issue; thus, it is always better to check your hard disk health regularly.
I hope this blog assists you with the necessary tools to take care of your hard drive. While the role of a disk drive seems to be as simple as storing data on your PC, it can affect the performance of your computer.
If you have any other ways or a routine you follow to ensure that your hard disk stays healthy, feel free to share it in the comment section below! That’s all for this blog; thanks for reading! Follow us on social media – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
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