How to check hard drive health in Windows Server
Have a noisy hard drive or two in your Windows Server? Experiencing less performance on your drives than usual? If so, you’ll want to check your hard drive health. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can check hard drive health in Windows Server with various tools like Disk Management, PowerShell, etc.
How to check hard drive health with the Disk Management tool
An easy way to check the health of the hard drives connected to your Windows Server is with the Disk Management tool. Disk Management is usually used to manage partitions, however, it can also tell you how your disks are.
To start, open up the Start Menu, search for “Create and format hard disk partitions,” and open it. Once it is open, look for the “Status” column. In this column, Windows will tell you if your drive is healthy or not.
If looking in the “Status” column isn’t enough, find the drive in the layout, and right-click on it. Select “Properties,” and locate the “General” tab. In this tab, find the “Device status” section. If your disk is healthy and working properly, it will say “This device is working properly.”
How to check hard drive health with PowerShell
Another way you can check hard drive health in Windows Server is via PowerShell. To start, open up a Windows PowerShell terminal. You can launch it via the Start Menu on the Windows Server desktop. Once it is open, use the “Get-PhysicalDisk” command.
Get-PhysicalDisk
After running the command above, PowerShell will output a table. This table will number all connected drives, show their serial number, media type, if they can be added to a storage pool, operational status, health status, etc.
To determine if your drives are operational, check the “OperationalStatus” column. If it says “OK,” your hard drive(s) can be utilized in Windows Server. If it says something other than “OK,” you’ll need to do some troubleshooting.
To determine if your drives are healthy, find the “HealthStatus” column. If your hard drive is healthy, it will say “Healthy” in this column. If the drive has “Unhealthy,” you may need to take a look at the drive. Lastly, if the “HealthStatus” column states “Warning,” you may want to replace the drive with a new one.
How to check hard drive health with GSmartControl
If the Disk Management tool or PowerShell doesn’t work for you, you can install a third-party program like GSmartControl. This program is useful, as it simplifies the process of checking your hard drive health. You can also use it to collect offline drive data.
To start, you must download and install GSmartControl on Windows Server. Head over to the official GSmartControl website download page. Once there, download the 64-bit installer to Windows Server. Then, open up the Explorer app.
Inside the Explorer app, find the “Downloads” folder, and click on it. Then, select the GsmartControl EXE to launch the installer. Go through the installer, and set up the software on Windows Server.
Once the software is installed on Windows Server, open up the Windows Start Menu, and launch the GsmartControl app. When it is launched, it will scan your server for connected hard drives.
Once the GSmartControl app is done scanning your server for connected hard drives, select a drive that you wish to check the health of. After selecting it, the information will appear under the “Basic health check” section.
To view an even more detailed rundown of a drive in GSmartControl, right-click on a drive and select the “View details” option. When you select “View details,” GSmartControl will show a more detailed readout of the drive.
How to error check your hard drive on Windows Server
Checking hard drive health helps to find out if something is critically wrong. However, sometimes, your hard drive isn’t in critical condition. Sometimes, there are just small errors that need to be fixed.
To run an error check on your hard drive in Windows Server, do the following. First, open up the Windows Explorer app on the Windows Server desktop. Then, find “This PC,” and select it.
On the “This PC” menu, locate the hard drive giving you issues. Then, right-click on the drive, and select “Properties.” Finally, select the “Tools” tab, and select the “Check” option to run an error check.
Selecting the “Check” button will bring up the “Error Checking” window. Click on the “Scan drive” button to scan the drive for errors. This scan may take some time to complete. When it finishes, your drive should be error-free!
