Storage drives often fail without warning, and while a mechanical hard drive may signal trouble through unusual noises, solid-state drives give no such physical clues, making it harder to know when one is deteriorating. Engadget outlines several built-in and free tools Windows users can use to check drive health before problems escalate, noting that a "healthy" reading is reassuring but never a guarantee against future failure, so regular backups remain essential regardless of diagnostic results.

Windows 11 can show estimated remaining life, spare capacity and temperature for supported NVMe SSDs, though Microsoft confirms this monitoring does not extend to SATA SSDs or traditional hard drives. A quick PowerShell check using "Get-PhysicalDisk" reveals a HealthStatus of Healthy, Warning, Unhealthy or Unknown, replacing the now-defunct WMIC command. For deeper insight, the free tool CrystalDiskInfo reads SMART data across HDDs and SSDs and rates drives as Good, Caution, Bad or Unknown, while CHKDSK separately checks for file-system errors and bad sectors; persistent warnings or an Unhealthy status are strong signs to back up data immediately and consider replacing the drive.