A hard drive can keep working for years without a single incident, but this critical piece of hardware also has a special talent for stabbing us in the back when we least expect it. When it comes to hard drives, peace of mind comes at the cost of eternal vigilance, so today we’ll look at three free tools that can alert you to different problems in the physical integrity of a drive.
Last week I was forced to go through the unpleasant process of replacing another hard drive. Remember how I had reactivated my BitTorrent box? Well, it's offline again, thanks to the horrible "clack!" the drive made at seven in the morning (I was awake, so I was a direct witness). 250 gigabytes evaporated into thin air, and although I managed to recover a good portion (around 70 percent, thanks to an external backup), that drive's betrayal managed to ruin my entire week. The saddest part is that it never gave any warning before failing. No S.M.A.R.T. alerts, no sudden performance drops, no blue screens... nothing. Just the clack, followed by silence. Once again, I can see that cursed phrase coming to life: Paranoia works. The first and last line of defense remains backing up your data, because it's not a question of if hard drives will fail, but when.
Three Free Tools to Check Your Drive
If you have even the slightest suspicion that something is wrong with your hard drive (or your solid-state drive, for that matter), don't wait. Despite all these years, the first stop is still HD Tune Its free version is over seven years old, but it continues to work very well on modern systems. You don't need the Pro edition to get an S.M.A.R.T. reading or check sectors; just go to the tab and start the task.
If for some special reason you don't want to use HD Tune and only need immediate information, CrystalDiskInfo has what you're looking for. Its developer offers several versions with ads, but the standard build is clean, works without restrictions, and also comes in a portable package.
Finally, we have Macrorit Disk Scanner Its only function is to check the integrity of sectors and generate an automatic log with the entries that come up damaged.
Some might think: Why not put everything in the cloud? After all, it's almost impossible for a user to locally generate the level of redundancy that Google, Microsoft, and other companies have. Leaving aside the debate about data control, my main arguments against cloud backups are two: upload speeds fall into the lamentable range (a strictly economic decision by providers), and when the connection is interrupted, access to our files is zero. Therefore, it's preferable to stick with the known methods: Keep a close eye on our drives, and back up until you're bored.
