How To SSD Health CHECK- Windows, MAC, Ubuntu

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Understanding how to check SSD health is integral to protecting your data. More and more hard disk drives are being replaced by SSDs because of their increased speed and reliability. However, SSDs are not immune to corruption or damage.

Table Of Content
How To SSD Health Check on Multiple Operating Systems

This article will discuss how to check SSD Drive health in some of the most common situations, and a few that aren’t so common. After a look at some of the basics of SSD health check, we’ll review the specifics related to these particular systems:

  • Windows
  • Mac
  • Linux

How To SSD Health Check

How To Check Ssd Health | Ttr Data Recovery

Before we get into the specifics of how to check SSD Drive health on various operating systems, we’ll discuss some of the preliminary information that you need to know. Let’s start with how solid state drives work, this will help you identify when your drive has already or will soon be going bad.

Crucial SSD Health Check Questions To Ask

Here are the most important questions that you should understand before proceeding to SSD check: 

What happens when an SSD fails?

When your SSD fails, you’ll encounter some or all of these symptoms:

  • Your drive cannot write; it is read-only.
  • You can’t read or write files at all.
  • Your computer regularly and inexplicably crashes.
  • You receive bad block errors.
  • Your file system no longer functions well.

The worse the problem, the more symptoms you’ll experience. And the more severe they will be. So as soon as you notice any of them, don’t delay in recovering your data. Only trust an expert in SSD Data Recovery Service!

What causes SSD to fail?

What Causes SSD to Fail | TTR Data Recovery

There are five common problems that lead to the failure of your solid-state drive:

  • Data corruption
  • Physical damage (such as water or impact)
  • Faulty firmware update
  • Short circuits
  • Faulty construction

Data corruption is basically a logical error. It can be caused by malware, a virus, or even just a bad sector.

Physical damage is exactly what it sounds like. The most common causes are spilling a liquid on your drive or dropping your computer. But other factors like excessive heat can also damage your SSD physically.

Faulty firmware updates occur often when something interrupts the process of your SSD updating its firmware. While keeping firmware updated is meant to ensure the best possible functionality, your SSD Drives will fail if something goes wrong.

Short circuits are rare for an SSD Drives. But, just like any electronic device, a power outage or surge could fry your drive.

Faulty construction errors are generally manufacturer defects. For example, if the electronics aren’t soldered properly, the connections may oxidize prematurely or otherwise break. Since SSDs don’t have moving parts, these sorts of issues are rarer than in HDDs, but they do still occur.

If you’re having a hard time about your SSD not showing up, here’s a good article SSD not showing up.

How do you tell if your SSD is corrupted?

How Do You Tell If Ssd Is Corrupted | Ttr Data Recovery

Check for these warning signs to determine if your SSD is corrupted:

  • Your computer crashes when it is trying to boot up.
  • It takes a really long time to save files.
  • Your computer throws a read-only error.
  • You find yourself having to restart your computer a lot.

SSD Lifespan Test

Your SSD Drives can only read and write data a limited amount of times. However, CNet reports that the lifespan of SSDs is so great that it’s basically not an issue. You’ll probably encounter other issues that kill your SSD before it ever reaches its read/write limit.

So there is really no practical reason you’ll ever need to perform an SSD lifespan test.

SSD Speed Test

The speed of your drive’s read and write functions is a crucial indicator when it comes time to SSD check. There are all manner of free programs you can use to do this. Here are a few of them:

  • CrystalDiskMark (Windows)
  • Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (Mac)
  • jDiskMark (Linux / Windows / Mac)
  • Parkdale (Linux / Windows / Mac / Android)

Most of these tools allow you to compare your SSD’s speed to the industry standards. If you notice that yours is running unreasonably slow, it could be a sign that it’s time to SSD health check.

Check SSD Health Software

Check SSD Health Software | TTR Data Recovery

Monitoring SSD health and performance relies on keeping track of disk failure, degradation, read and write speed, temperature, and more. Here are several pieces of software that make it easier for you to check SSD health:

  • Samsung Magician (Windows / Linux)
  • Toshiba SSD Utility (Windows / Mac)
  • Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox (Windows / Mac / Linux)
  • Hard Disk Sentinel (Windows / Linux / DOS)

HDD Health Check

It’s worth pointing out that most of the warning signs for a failing SSD are similar to those of an HDD. The software you use to check SSD will generally work for HDDs too. Just be sure to check the software specifications to make sure.

SSD Drives and S.M.A.R.T

Modern solid-state drives are equipped with a feature known as S.M.A.R.T. This stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. S.M.A.R.T. basically allows your computer to keep tabs on the state of your drive and warn you before you suffer significant data loss. 

In the following sections, we’ll look at how to keep tabs on your S.M.A.R.T. indicators in a variety of operating systems.

How To Check SSD Health Windows

How To Check Ssd Health Windows | Ttr Data Recovery

Checking SSD health in Windows requires running Command Prompt. This can be accessed from the Start Menu search bar by typing “cmd”.

How To Check SSD Health Windows 10

  • Run Command Prompt
  • Type wmic diskdrive get model,status then press Enter
  • Each drive will be displayed, along with one of two statuses: OK means that your SSD performance is healthy and Pred Fail means that your drive may crash soon. Do everything possible to back up your data ASAP.

How To Check SSD Health Windows 7

To check SSD health in Windows 7, follow the same steps listed above for Windows 10. It’s exactly the same process.

How Do I View Drives in Command Prompt?

If you need to see all of the drives available on your system, it’s pretty straight forward:

  • Run Command Prompt
  • Type wmic diskdrive get model,status then press Enter
  • View the list of drives provided

How To Perform Kingston SSD Health Check

If you have Kingston SSD Manager installed, you can monitor the health of your SSD as follows:

  • Run Kingston SSD Manager.
  • Navigate to the “Health” tab.
  • Click “refresh data” to ensure the information is updated.
  • Review the provided health indicators, which will be color-coded according to severity.
  • Pay attention to any warnings that exceed the numbers in the “Threshold” attribute.

For more information, see the Kingston SSD Manager User Guide.

How To Check SSD Health Samsung

How to Check SSD Health Samsung | TTR Data Recovery

If you have a Samsung SSD running on Windows, you can use Samsung SSD Magician Software to monitor ssd health and performance of your solid-state drives. This is freeware provided by Samsung that will provide you with metrics related to read/write speed, temperature, and overall health of the drive.

It can really do so much more than we could fit in this guide, so your best bet is to install Samsung SSD Magician and explore what it has to offer on your own.

Can I run ChkDsk on SSD?

Yes! In fact, it’s crucial for detecting bad sectors as we’ll cover in the next question. But some people are worried that ChkDsk could harm an SSD because of potential defragging. The good news is that the process is so minor that there is no harm in running ChkDsk on your SSD.

How do I know if my SSD has bad sectors?

On Windows, the easiest way to do this is to run ChkDsk. This will inform you of how many bad sectors are on the drive. If you want to see if the problem is getting worse, you can run ChkDsk a few days later and see if the number of bad sectors is increasing.

How To Check SSD Health Mac?

On a Mac, you will use Disk Utility to check SSD. To access this program, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and then choose the desired drive you wish to check.

How do I check the health of my SSD Mac?

Once you’ve selected the appropriate drive in Utilities, look at the section labeled “S.M.A.R.T Status”. It will display one of two readings:

  • Verified indicates that the SSD is healthy.
  • Failing tells you that disk failure is imminent.

How To Check SSD Health Macbook?

Since Macbooks run on the same OS as a desktop, the process to check your SSD health is exactly the same. This also goes for if you are wondering how to check SSD health Macbook Pro.

How To Check SSD Health Linux?

How to Check SSD Health Linux | TTR Data Recovery

If you’re running Linux, the simplest way to check SSD health is through the command line tool smartctl. This is part of the smartmontools package, which will need to be installed prior to checking your SSD health in Linux.

How to Check SSD Health Ubuntu?

  • Install the smartmontools package with the command sudo apt install smartmontools.
  • Run the command sudo smartctl -t short -a /dev/sdX (in place of sdX, use the name of your SSD). This will run a short test that takes approximately 2 minutes.
  • When the test is complete, run command sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX to display the results.
  • The most important attribute to look for is “Wear_Leveling_Count”, which indicates the remaining stamina of the drive out of 100. As this number approaches zero, your SSD is nearing failure.

How to Check SSD Health Debian?

To check your SSD health in Debian, follow the same instructions as for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is built from the Testing branch of Ubuntu, so in essence they are very similar in function. Installing, running, and reviewing smartctl follows the same process.

Final Thoughts on How To Check SSD Health

Final Thoughts How To Check SSD Health | TTR Data Recovery

Hopefully, this post gives you a good idea of why it’s important to check SSD health.

SSDs bring a lot to the table. And they are being preferred to HDDs more and more due to their enhanced reliability and speed.

Here’s a good comparison on which is better, SSHD vs SSD.

But just because they don’t rely on moving parts, doesn’t mean your SSD is immune to corruption. The best way to save yourself the trouble of data recovery is to regularly check SSD health using one of the many methods discussed in this guide. At the earliest sign of potential damage to your drive, it’s time to back up your data. Learn more about our hard drive data recovery service.

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Tommy Kh | Ttr Data Recovery

About the Author
Tommy Khamoushi, Data Recovery Expert

Tommy Khamoushi is an IACRB-certified Data Recovery Engineer and a Certified Forensic Computer Investigator. He has more than 20 years of experience in data recovery including providing technical support for the House of Representatives.

Tommy leads a team of data recovery engineers and experts at TTR Data Recovery to recover highly sensitive data for government agencies like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and enterprise businesses using advanced and proprietary techniques and processes.

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