How to check the health of a hard drive
Problem
My SATA drive started clicking and I was unable to access the data. This is the hard drive in question: HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLA380 (0A31636) 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive It was not clicking loudly though, like a drive that has already gone bad. After tightening the connections to the hard drive, it stopped clicking and I was able to access the data again. I have started to move files off of the drive, but I think this drive might still be in good health. I didn't find any data corruption and I haven't had any trouble accessing any files. I have never had an SATA drive fail before so I'm thinking that it could have just been the loose connections that was causing the problem. What tests can I run on this drive to find out how healthy it is?
Unverified for your environment
Select your OS to check compatibility.
1 Fix
Fix for: How to check the health of a hard drive
This will give you an abundance of information about your hard drive's health. The tool also permits you to start and monitor self tests of the drive. If you want to do benchmarks / check all of the sectors to find one that is bad, you can find other tools for that, but smartctl is the first place to go for drive health status.
Awaiting Verification
Be the first to verify this fix
Sign in to verify this fix