Check the health of your SSD or hard disk
Open Terminal as administrator
Right-click Start › Terminal (Admin) › Yes.
The simulation shows Windows in English, like most laptops.
Open Terminal as administrator
Right-click Start › Terminal (Admin) › Yes.
Start (right-click)›Terminal (Admin)Run the disk check command
Copy the command from Technician fixes, paste it, press Enter.
Read the result
Healthy and low Wear = fine. Warning, or Wear above 80 = back up now and replace the disk.
Did it work?
Save it, or post it to your story.
From basic to technician
Technician fixes (advanced)
The simple steps didn’t help? A technician would try these next, in this order. Stop as soon as the problem is fixed. Commands marked “as administrator”: right-click Start › Terminal (Admin).
Overall health (as administrator)
HealthStatus should be Healthy and OperationalStatus OK. Warning or Unhealthy means the disk itself reports a problem: back up today.
Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus, Size
Wear, temperature and errors (as administrator)
Wear is the percentage of an SSD’s rated life used (0 = new). Temperature above about 70 °C under light use means poor cooling. Any Uncorrected errors above 0 are a serious warning. Some disks leave fields empty; that is normal.
Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object DeviceId, Wear, Temperature, PowerOnHours, ReadErrorsUncorrected, WriteErrorsUncorrected
Quick check on older Windows
Shows OK or Pred Fail for each disk. “Pred Fail” = the disk predicts its own failure: replace it.
wmic diskdrive get model,status
Moving to a new disk without reinstalling
A repair shop can clone the old disk to a new SSD so Windows, apps and files move over unchanged. Do it while the old disk still works.
Technical details (for the curious)
S.M.A.R.T.
Every SSD and hard disk records its own health (SMART): hours used, bad sectors, temperature and, for SSDs, the percentage of life used (Wear).
Signs a disk is failing
The laptop suddenly gets very slow opening files, clicking noises from a hard disk, files that suddenly become corrupt, or CHKDSK keeps finding errors.
A graphical tool
Free apps like CrystalDiskInfo show the same data in colours (blue = good, yellow = caution, red = bad). Download only from the official site.
While you’re here
Worth reading
Quiz time
Still not fixed?
In the next update you can tell us what happened, and our AI helper will suggest another way. Until then, restart the device and go through the steps once more.