How to check hard drive health

Windows and macOS both include a drive health check: Get-PhysicalDisk in PowerShell on Windows, and the S.M.A.R.T. status plus First Aid in Disk Utility on a Mac. This guide walks through both, explains what each result means, and why a clean report is reassurance rather than a guarantee.

Written by Essential Data RecoveryPublished 2026-09-13Owner-reviewedRevision 1

A stethoscope-style listening horn resting on a closed portable hard drive on folded cream linen on pale oak wood

A health check tells you whether a drive is already reporting trouble, and both Windows and macOS include one: nothing to download. The checks take a few minutes, they are read-only until you choose a repair, and they answer one question: is this drive predicting its own failure? They cannot tell you how much life is left, and a clean result is not a promise, which is why this guide starts with a backup rather than a result.

Copy the files you cannot replace to another drive or to cloud storage before you check or repair anything. A status readout is harmless, but repair steps such as chkdsk /f and First Aid write to the drive while they work, and a drive that is already warning about failure may not last through one. If the check comes back anything other than clean, you want the backup to already exist.^[1]

What the built-in checks measure

SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is monitoring hardware built into the drive itself. The drive tracks its own condition, and the operating system reads a one-line summary of it: the S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility on a Mac, HealthStatus in PowerShell on Windows. Both built-in checks are versions of that summary, so they tell you whether the drive is already predicting trouble, not how long it will last. What the individual measurements mean is its own subject.^[2]

What SMART is, and which values matter

Check drive health on Windows

Windows has two relevant built-ins, and they measure different things. The health check is the PowerShell cmdlet Get-PhysicalDisk, which lists every physical disk with a HealthStatus value. chkdsk is the other one, and it is not a health check: Microsoft documents it as checking the file system and file system metadata of a volume for logical and physical errors, and says that without parameters it displays only the status of the volume and fixes nothing.^[3][4]

Run the built-in health check

Right-click the Start button and choose Terminal (Windows 11) or Windows PowerShell.
Type Get-PhysicalDisk and press Enter. Each connected disk appears on one line.
Read the HealthStatus column. The documented values are Healthy, Warning, Unhealthy and Unknown.
Healthy means the drive is not predicting a failure. Warning or Unhealthy means stop here and back up first; see Reading the results below.
Ignore older instructions that say to run wmic diskdrive get status: Microsoft removed the WMIC tool from Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 in August 2026 and names PowerShell as its replacement.

^[5][4]

chkdsk is worth running when files misbehave, as long as you know what it covers. The /f parameter fixes file-system errors. The /r parameter adds a scan that locates bad sectors and attempts to recover readable information from them, which is the only part of chkdsk that reaches the disk surface itself. It needs administrator rights, works only on local disks, and the volume must be locked, so a check of the drive Windows runs from is scheduled for the next restart.^[3]

Run chkdsk on a volume

Right-click the Start button and choose Terminal (Admin).
For a secondary drive, type chkdsk D: /f, using that drive's letter.
For the drive Windows runs from, type chkdsk C: /f, type Y when asked to schedule the check, and restart.
Let it run to the end; Microsoft notes that interrupting chkdsk is not recommended.
Read the summary it prints. A clean run means the file system checked out and no sectors failed to read.

^[3]

If the drive is an SSD, one adjustment applies. Microsoft cautions that while running chkdsk on an SSD is not dangerous, repeated full-surface scans, especially with /r, can unnecessarily increase write and erase cycles and slightly reduce SSD lifespan, and that an occasional check is not a significant concern. Use /r when there is a reason to, not on a schedule. How an SSD actually fails is a different mechanism from a hard drive anyway.^[3]

How SSDs fail, and why it looks different from a failing hard drive

Check drive health on Mac

Disk Utility does two separate jobs. It shows the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status, which Apple defines as the disk's general working condition, and it runs First Aid, which Apple scopes to errors related to the formatting and directory structure of a storage device. Apple also states directly that Disk Utility can't detect or repair all problems a disk may have. Read the SMART status first: it is the one line that describes the hardware rather than the file system.^[1][2]

Check SMART status, then run First Aid

Open Disk Utility. It lives in Applications > Utilities, or find it with Spotlight.
Choose View > Show All Devices so the physical disk appears in the sidebar.
Select a disk and click the Info button in the toolbar, then find S.M.A.R.T. status in the panel.
Select the first volume, click First Aid, click Run, and follow the onscreen instructions.
Repeat for each volume and container on the device, then select the device itself and run First Aid on it.
If the drive you are checking is the one your Mac starts from, restart into macOS Recovery and run First Aid there on Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data.

^[1][2]

If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, Apple's instruction is to back up your data and replace the disk, because that condition cannot be repaired. If First Aid fails or cannot repair the disk, Apple's documented path is to back up as much of your data as possible, reformat the disk, and reinstall macOS, accepting that the disk may be physically damaged and need replacement. Keep those steps in that order: the reformat erases whatever was still on the drive.^[1]

Reading the results

Every warning-level result means the same thing, whichever tool produced it: Warning or Unhealthy under HealthStatus, a S.M.A.R.T. status that is anything but healthy, or Disk Utility telling you the disk is about to fail. The older Status readout behind these labels calls the same condition Pred Fail, which Microsoft defines as a SMART-enabled disk that may be functioning properly but is predicting a failure in the near future. Those words are the whole situation: the drive still works today. Copy the irreplaceable files first, then replace the drive rather than trusting it with the only copy of anything.^[1][6]

A clean report is worth less than it feels like it should be. chkdsk grades the file system. First Aid grades formatting and directory structure, and Apple says outright that it can't detect or repair all problems. The SMART status is one summary line, not an inspection. Drives do die without any warning from these tools, which is why backups continue after a good result rather than replacing one.^[1]

Skip the checks entirely if the drive is making new mechanical noises: clicking, grinding, or regular beeping. Sounds like those can mean a drive that will not survive a scan, and every hour it runs is a risk to the data on it. Power the drive down, leave it off, and follow the clicking hard drive guide instead of running diagnostics.^[1]

Clicking hard drive: what to do, and what not to do

If you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a drive problem at all, guided help asks a few questions and sends you to the right guide.