The Anniversary Update for Windows 10 is out, and in the early days of August we reviewed its most important elements. But it also brought background tools that haven't received as much attention. One of them is StorDiag, which essentially behaves like a super-log generator based on Chkdsk, Fsutil, and a general event trace. If there's something wrong with your computer's drives, chances are StorDiag knows about it.
When Storage Starts Acting Up
Hard drive or SSD issues? Slow performance? Data corruption? Blue screens? Driver conflicts? How much do we need to inspect to pinpoint the exact cause of a failure? Windows requires all the help we can provide for its maintenance, but aside from a few new mechanisms, the general process remains a test of patience. Obviously, we'd be wrong to lay all the blame on the operating system. Hard drives wear out, SATA cables are more fragile than they appear, and solid-state drives aren't immortal by any means. In general, drive failures don't leave room for subtlety (they're usually critical, catastrophic, and loud), but if you notice something odd—especially after installing the Windows 10 Anniversary Update—you now have a new ally in StorDiag.
How StorDiag Works
StorDiag runs on the system console with administrator privileges, meaning there's no interface; every command must be typed manually. Fortunately, there are three options: -collectEtw creates a 30-second event trace, -checkFSConsistency evaluates the file system state on all detected drives (in other words, a global Chkdsk), and -out lets you redirect the flood of logs to a custom path. The entire log output takes up between 9 and 15 MB, and I have to admit the amount of information StorDiag gathers is impressive. Still, StorDiag focuses on diagnosis and doesn't perform any repairs.
The only issue we found with StorDiag is the same one that recurs in other Windows tools: its design and operation don't cater to the average user. As a result, it's system administrators and advanced users who'll really get the most out of it. I imagine that sooner or later someone will build a kind of GUI to visualize StorDiag's data with ease. Here, I'll tip my hat to Nirsoft, because so far they haven't let us down.
