To check the health of a PC's hard drive, users can use built-in tools or third-party software. Traditional hard drives (HDDs) might show problems with clicking or grinding noises, while newer solid-state drives (SSDs) usually don't make such sounds. Problems with either type of drive can cause corrupted files, slow performance, frequent read or write errors, system crashes, or the drive disappearing from Windows. If these issues occur, it's important to back up important files before running any diagnostics. Windows includes several built-in tools for checking drive health, though the details may vary depending on the hardware. In Windows 11, users can find drive health information by opening Settings, going to System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes. Selecting a drive and clicking Properties can show estimated remaining life, available spare capacity, and temperature for supported NVMe SSDs. Windows can also alert users if spare capacity is low, reliability has dropped, or the drive has gone into read-only mode. However, this health monitoring does not cover SATA SSDs or traditional hard drives. For more detailed diagnostics, users can use PowerShell. Opening a PowerShell tab in Windows Terminal and typing Get-PhysicalDisk will display the HealthStatus column, which can show Healthy, Warning, Unhealthy, or Unknown. Older methods using wmic diskdrive get status are no longer recommended, as the WMIC tool has been removed from supported versions of Windows 11. If the result is Healthy and the PC is working normally, it's still a good idea to keep backing up data, as drive health systems may not detect all issues. A free tool called CrystalDiskInfo can read SMART data from many HDDs and SSDs, including NVMe drives, and provides a health status of Good, Caution, Bad, or Unknown. If a Caution or Bad result is received, backing up data becomes the priority. Users can then verify the issue using diagnostic software provided by the drive manufacturer, such as Seagate's SeaTools or Samsung Magician for Samsung SSDs. Persistent warnings, an Unhealthy result, or obvious mechanical symptoms are signs that a drive may need to be replaced. The CHKDSK tool can also help by checking a volume's file system and metadata for errors. Using the /f option fixes file-system errors, and the /r option locates bad sectors and attempts to recover readable data. However, fixing file-system issues with CHKDSK does not repair faulty hardware. For HDDs, CrystalDiskInfo can trigger a Caution status based on three SMART attributes: reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and uncorrectable sectors.