- To check hard drive health on Windows 11, open Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes. Open the properties for the hard drive and check the health status.
- The status will show the estimated remaining life, available spare, and temperature.
Windows 11 has a storage health monitoring feature that can detect hardware problems on hard drives and notify you ahead of time to give you enough time to create a backup of your data, and in this guide, you will learn how to use it.
The feature is part of the modern “Disks & volumes” settings, and it’s available for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) Solid-State Drives (SSDs). If a possible hardware problem is detected on the hard drive, you will get a desktop notification letting you know that “a storage device may be at risk of failure and requires your attention,” which you can click to access more details about the problem.
If you missed the notification, the storage drive performance is degrading or acting up, and you want to check its health, you will have to access the details manually through the Settings app.
This guide will teach you the steps to check the hard drive’s health without the need for third-party software on Windows 11.
Check hard drive health on Windows 11
To check the health of the hard disk on Windows 11, use these steps:
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Open Settings on Windows 11.
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Click on System.
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Click the Storage tab.
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Under the “Storage management” section, select on Advanced storage settings option.
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Click the “Disks & volumes” setting.
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Select the hard drive to check the health report on Windows 11.
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Click the Properties button.
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Under the “Drive health” section, confirm if the drive is at risk of failure and is going bad.
Once you complete the steps, if the feature detects a potential problem, you will see a warning message, which it might read, “reliability is degraded Back up your data in case of drive failure.” Along with the warning, you also get estimated remaining life, available space, and temperature information.
If you get a risk of failure warning for a hard drive, it is strongly recommended to back up the data immediately because the chances of failure are imminent.
You can also click the “Back up now” option to access the backup settings to upload the files to OneDrive. However, you can use other tools, such as the System Image Backup tool, or third-party software to back up the data, such as Macrium Reflect.
The screenshot of the drive health for this post is from a virtual SSD, and it doesn’t reflect the real information. If the hard drive has issues, the health information may look like the screenshot below.
If you don’t see the drive health information, it’s likely that you don’t have a supported drive (currently, only NVMe SSDs are supported).
Whether your computer has an SSD or HDD drive, it’s always a good idea to replace the drive as soon as you start noticing problems or the age of the drive is around two or three years.
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].