A hard drive failure can cause us to lose our most valuable data. Wouldn't it be great if you could know in advance if your hard drive is going to fail in the near future? With this you could make a backup of all the important data before it stops working. We explain how to check the health of a hard disk with CrystalDiskInfo .
Unfortunately, nothing is infallible, but we can use the free CrystalDiskInfo tool to check the health of our computer's hard drives. CrystalDiskInfo is a hard disk health monitoring utility , which displays basic device information, monitors SMART values, and unit temperature. The best thing is that it is compatible with both mechanical hard drives and SSDs.
How to use CrystalDiskInfo to view hard drive health status
You can download CrystalDiskInfo from the Crystal Mark official website. After downloading, you just have to extract the contents of the ZIP file and run the DiskInfo.exe file to start using the tool.
In the main window you can see basic information such as your hard drive model, serial number, firmware, power-on number, power-on hours, etc. It also shows the SMART data and temperature of the unit, as well as its health status .
The temperature and health status will be blue if the values are safe , and they will turn red if it is outside the safe limits. It can also be shown in yellow, this symbolizes a risk, but not immediate.
If you see that the color is yellow or red, you should back up your most important data immediately. Your hard drive or SSD could fail at any moment, especially if the color is red.
In addition to using CrystalDiskInfo, it is important that you check if your mechanical hard drive is making any kind of strange noise while it is running. This is usually one of the most typical symptoms that a hard drive is starting to fail. Other indicators that your hard drive may be failing is that you receive a lot of blue screens, or that the computer freezes for a few seconds at random.