How to check ssd health
How to check ssd health
How to check your SSD’s health and other stats
Have you ever looked at your cat as it stared at a blank wall and thought, “What is he or she thinking?” I certainly have, and I’ve done the same thing with my SSD too, wondering if it was doing OK, if it was running too hot, if it was over-worked, and whether it was operating at peak performance. Since your SSD usually contains your operating system and a lot of your critical data, it’s important to keep tabs on it. Unfortunately, there isn’t a built-in Windows tool that lets you do that.
This is where CrystalDiskInfo comes to the rescue. This free software tool will show you a lot of vital information about any storage device attached to your motherboard, and it’s a godsend for SSD users especially.
To take a peek under your drive’s hood, first you need to download a free copy of CrystalDiskInfo. When you open and run the program it’ll give you a bunch of handy info on the selected drive—seen below is a 1TB Intel 660p SSD.
What is most important here is all the data in the box at the top of the screen, particularly the simple box labeled “Health Status.” This is a translation of the drive’s S.M.A.R.T. data—a self-reporting function all drives have nowadays, that can register when something is amiss with the component. If you see anything other than “Good” in the Health Status box, one of the S.M.A.R.T. values in the table at the bottom of the screen will be highlighted for your attention; regardless of the specific issue is, you’d be wise to start shopping for a new drive.
Another useful bit of info is in the top-right corner, where it shows you the amount of data that has been written to the drive—in this instance, about 62TB. This is important to know since most, if not all, SSDs include an endurance rating, so that gives you an idea of how much life is left in your drive. For this SSD, Intel claims it can write up to 200TB before it peters out, so this drive has quite a bit of life left in it. You might also be curious to see the number of times it’s been powered on, and how many hours it’s been running, but neither of those stats will have an impact on the drive’s performance.
In the middle section there is some handy information for verifying that your drive is operating at its peak capacity, which is noted in the box labeled, “Transfer Mode.” With motherboards these days having multiple M.2 slots, it is useful to double-check that the slot you’re using is a true X4 slot as opposed to a slower X2 slot.
How to Perform an SSD Health Check
Read more tutorials by AbdulMusawwir Khatri!
Table of Contents
A Solid State Drives (SSDs) performs much faster than the usual Hard Disk Drive (HDD) you get when buying a PC or laptop. An SSD offers lesser chances of failure, but as all drives age, failure is inevitable. So how would you avoid loss of data? There are tools you can use for an SSD health check and even extend its life.
In this article, you’ll learn how to check your SSD’s health and performance via health check tools such as Crystal Disk Info and cmdlets available in PowerShell.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
The tutorial runs all demos on a Windows 10 Build 19042 machine installed on an SSD, but other builds of Windows PC will work.
Performing SSD Health Check via CrystalDiskInfo
Perhaps you’re looking for a method to perform an SSD health check that doesn’t make you look like a geek. If that’s the case, take a look at CrystalDiskInfo. Crystal Disk Info is a free GUI HDD/SDD utility software available on the Crystal Mark website.
Differently themed versions of Crystal Disk Info are available to download, but this tutorial uses the standard version.
Download CrystalDiskInfo by clicking on CrystalDiskInfo, as shown below. Now run the installer you downloaded to install CrystalDiskInfo on your PC.
Launch CrystalDiskInfo from your desktop, and you’ll see a bunch of information about your SSD, as shown below.
Depending on your SSD’s health, the health status either appears Green (good), Yellow (caution), Red (failed), or Gray (unknown state). You can see below that the SSD’s health is Unknown, which indicates a firmware update is needed for the SSD or CrystalDiskInfo does not support the controller.
Your SSD manufacturer will usually provide firmware updates for bug fixes, performance, or security enhancements.
Performing an SSD Health Check via PowerShell
Even though CrystalDiskInfo might cover the most commonly used drive controllers, not all are supported. This limitation is one of the primary reasons to turn to PowerShell when performing an SSD health check.
If you spend most of your time running commands in PowerShell, then performing an SSD health check via PowerShell is what suits you best. PowerShell lets you check your SSD for read-write errors, wear leveling, percent, temperature, and several other important details.
Let’s cover how to jointly use two primary cmdlets (the Get-PhysicalDisk and Get-StorageReliabilityCounter ) to get a better view of your SSD’s health status.
Now open PowerShell as administrator, and run the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet on its own to return basic information about your SSD.
PowerShell is readily available to determine whether your SSD is in good condition or if it requires a replacement. And as you can see below, the SSD’s status is Healthy, which indicates the SSD is working normally and there are no problems.
Retrieving SSD Usage Statistics
The Get-PhysicalDisk command provides a handful of information about your SSD. But perhaps you’re only interested in information showing your SSD usage statistics, such as the write latency or power-on hours.
To narrow down returned SSD information, pipe the Get-StorageReliabilityCounter cmdlet to the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet and format the result as a list ( Format-List ).
Below, you see most of the important SSD health information.
Now run the Get-PhysicalDisk command below to filter out the output list by specifying required information ( ReadErrorsTotal and Wear ).
Below, you can see only the specified information, ReadErrorsTotal and Wear.
If you see a number other than 0 appearing for any of the two fields, consider replacing your SSD.
Formatting Health Check Output for Multiple SSDs
You’ve learned how to perform an SSD health check in a single SSD so far. But what if you have more than 1 SSD? Enclosing commands in a For Each loop will save time and get the specific information you need simultaneously.
In the command below, the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet reads a set of objects ( foreach ) returned by the Get-StorageReliabilityCounter cmdlet piped with the Format-List cmdlet. The command completes when it’s finished with the last object.
PowerShell offers extensive functionality, such as setting up a scheduled task to check your SSD’s health. That scheduled task can even email you the results, which would be more beneficial for a real-life scenario.
Erasing Unused Data Blocks with TRIM
Now that you know how to check your SSD’s health, it is vital to understand how to maintain the high performance of your SSD. As you perform read-write operations on your SSD, it will slowly wear out the flash memory cells.
Is there a way that you could minimize the damage and maximize the performance of your SSD? Sure there is! To keep an SSD at its prime performance, TRIM was designed. TRIM informs the operating system about which data blocks are no longer serve a purpose in a disk and can be safely erased.
Data recovery from a TRIM-enabled SSD is not possible due to the data being deleted permanently and overwritten.
TRIM is enabled by default for an SSD, but if you’re skeptical and want to confirm that TRIM is enabled, run the command below.
Run the fsutil behavior command below to query the system if TRIM (aka. DisableDeleteNotify ) is enabled or not.
Below, you can tell that TRIM is disabled as the returned value is zero (0). If the command returned (1), then TRIM is currently enabled.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to perform an SSD health check via CrystalDiskInfo and PowerShell which ships with your Windows PC. Now you can surely expect to avoid situations whereby your SSD would fail unknowingly.
The question now is, would you rely on third-party software to perform an SSD health check or stick to PowerShell?
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Мониторинг и проверка состояния SSD в Linux
И снова здравствуйте. Перевод следующей статьи подготовлен специально для студентов курса «Администратор Linux». Поехали!
Что такое S.M.A.R.T.?
S.M.A.R.T. (расшифровывается как Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) – это технология, вшитая в накопители, такие как жесткие диски или SSD. Ее основная задача – это мониторинг состояния.
На деле, S.M.A.R.T. контролирует несколько параметров во время обычной работы с диском. Он мониторит такие параметры как количество ошибок чтения, время запуска диска и даже состояние окружающей среды. Помимо этого, S.M.A.R.T. также может проводить тесты с использованием накопителя.
В идеале, S.M.A.R.T. позволит прогнозировать предсказуемые отказы, такие как отказы, вызванные механическим износом или ухудшением состояния поверхности диска, а также непредсказуемые отказы, вызванные каким-либо неожиданным дефектом. Поскольку обычно диски не выходят из строя внезапно, S.M.A.R.T. помогает операционной системе или системному администратору идентифицировать те диски, которые скоро выйдут из строя, чтобы их можно было заменить и избежать потери данных.
Что не относится к S.M.A.R.T.?
Все это, конечно, круто. Однако S.M.A.R.T. – это не хрустальный шар. Он не может спрогнозировать отказ со стопроцентной вероятностью и не может гарантировать, что накопитель не выйдет из строя без предупреждения. В лучшем случае S.M.A.R.T. стоит использовать для оценки вероятности поломки.
Учитывая статистический характер прогнозирования отказов, технология S.M.A.R.T. особенно интересует компании, использующие большое количество устройств для хранения данных. Чтобы выяснить, насколько точно S.M.A.R.T. может прогнозировать отказы и сообщать о необходимости замены дисков в центрах обработки данных или серверных мейнфреймах, даже проводились специальные исследования.
В 2016 году Microsoft и университет штата Пенсильвания провели исследование, связанное с SSD.
Согласно этому исследованию, некоторые атрибуты S.M.A.R.T. считаются хорошими индикаторами неизбежности отказа. В особенности в статье упоминаются:
Счетчик переназначенных (Realloc) секторов:
Несмотря на то, что основополагающие технологии радикально отличаются, этот показатель остается востребованным как в мире SSD, так и в мире жестких дисков. Стоит отметить, что из-за особенностей алгоритмов балансировки износа, используемых в SSD, когда несколько секторов выходят из строя, то с большой вероятностью можно предположить, что скоро выйдут из строя еще больше.
Ошибки в цикле Program/Erase (P/E):
Это признак проблем с основным оборудованием флеш-памяти, связанных с тем, что диск не может удалить данные из блока или сохранить их там. Дело в том, что процесс производства несовершенен, поэтому появление таких ошибок вполне можно ожидать. Однако флеш-память имеет ограниченное число циклов записи/удаления. По этой причине внезапное увеличение числа событий может сигнализировать о том, что диск достигает своего предела, и вполне ожидаемо, что другие ячейки памяти также начнут выходить из строя.
CRC и неисправимые ошибки («Data Error ”):
События такого типа могут быть вызваны ошибками хранения, либо проблемами с внутренним каналом связи накопителя. Этот индикатор учитывает как исправленные ошибки (без проблем сообщенные хост-системе), так и неисправленные ошибки (из-за которых происходит блокировка диска, сообщившего хост-системе о невозможности чтения). Другими словами, исправляемые ошибки невидимы для операционной системы, тем не менее они влияют на производительность накопителя, увеличивая вероятность переназначения сектора.
SATA downshift count:
Из-за временных помех, проблем с каналом связи между накопителем и хостом или из-за внутренних проблем с накопителем, интерфейс SATA может переключиться на более низкую скорость передачи сигналов. Снижение скорости соединения ниже номинального уровня оказывает очевидное влияние на производительность диска. Таким образом, этот показатель является наиболее значимым, в особенности, когда он коррелирует с наличием одного или нескольких предыдущих показателей.
Согласно исследованию, 62% вышедших из строя SSD показали наличие как минимум одного из вышеприведенных симптомов. С другой стороны можно сказать, что 38% изученных накопителей сломались без индикации этих симптомов. В исследованиях не упоминалось, были ли какие-то еще сообщения об отказах от S. M. A. R. T. по другим «симптомам». По этой причине нельзя напрямую сопоставить эти значения с отказом без предупреждения в 36% случаев из статьи от Google.
В исследовании Microsoft и университета штата Пенсильвания не раскрывались модели исследуемых дисков, однако, по словам авторов, большинство дисков поступают от одного и того же поставщика в течение уже нескольких поколений.
В ходе исследования также были отмечены значительные различия в надёжности между различными моделями. Например, «худшая» изученная модель показывает двадцатипроцентную частоту отказов через 9 месяцев после первой ошибки переназначения и до 36-ти процентов отказов в течение 9 месяцев после первого появления ошибок данных. «Худшей» моделью было названо более старое поколение дисков, рассматриваемых в статье.
С другой стороны, с теми же симптомами, что приведены выше, накопители нового поколения отказали в 3% и 20% в соответствии с теми же ошибками. Трудно сказать, можно ли объяснить эти цифры улучшением конструкции накопителя и производственного процесса, или здесь роль играет эффект устаревания накопителя.
Самое интересное, что упоминается в статье (я уже писал об этом ранее), так это то, что увеличение количества зарегистрированных ошибок может случить тревожным индикатором:
«Существует большая вероятность появления симптомов, предшествующих отказу SSD, которые активно себя проявляют и быстро прогрессируют, сильно сокращая время жизни накопителя до нескольких месяцев.»
Другими словами, одна случайная ошибка, о которой сообщил S.M.A.R.T., определенно не должна рассматриваться как сигнал о неизбежном отказе. Однако, когда исправный SSD начинает сообщать о все большем количестве ошибок, следует ждать краткосрочного или среднесрочного сбоя.
Использование smartctl для мониторинга состояния вашего SSD в Linux
smartctl – это инструмент командной строки, но это особенно помогает в случаях, когда вам нужно автоматизировать сбор данных, например, с ваших серверов.
Первый шаг в использовании smartctl – это проверка того, есть ли на вашем диске S.M.A.R.T. и поддерживается ли он инструментом:
Как видите, мой внутренний жесткий диск ноутбука действительно поддерживает S.M.A.R.T. и он включен. Итак, как теперь получить S.M.A.R.T статус? Есть ли какие-то зафиксированные ошибки?
Понимание выходных данных команд smartctl
На выходе получается много информации, которую не всегда легко понять. Наиболее интересной, вероятно, является та часть, которая помечена как “Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds”. Она сообщает различные статистические данные, собранные S.M.A.R.T. устройством, и позволяет сравнить эти значения (текущие или худшие за все время) с некоторым порогом, определенным поставщиком.
Например, вот мои отчеты о переназначенных секторах на диске:
Вы можете заметить атрибут «Pre-fail». Он означает, что значение является аномальным. Таким образом, если значение превышает пороговое, велика вероятность сбоя. Другая категория »Old_age» используется для атрибутов, отвечающих значениям «нормального износа».
Последнее поле (здесь со значением «3») соответствует исходному значению атрибута, которое сообщает диск. Обычно это число имеет физическое значение. Здесь это фактическое количество переназначенных секторов. Для других атрибутов это может быть температура в градусах Цельсия, время в часах или минутах или количество раз, когда для диска было выполнено определенное условие.
В дополнение к исходному значению, диск с поддержкой S.M.A.R.T. должен сообщать «нормализованные значения» (значения полей, самые худшие и пороговые). Эти значения нормируются в диапазоне 1-254 (0-255 для пороговых значений). Прошивка диска выполняет эту нормализацию с помощью некоторого внутреннего алгоритма. Кроме того, разные производители могут нормализовать один и тот же атрибут по-разному. Большинство значений представлены в процентах, причем чем выше, тем лучше, но так бывает не всегда. Когда параметр ниже или равен пороговому значению, указанному производителем, диск считается неисправным в терминах этого атрибута. Помня о всех указаниях из первой части статьи, когда атрибут, показывающий ранее значение “pre-fail” все-таки дал сбой, наиболее вероятно, что скоро диск выйдет из строя.
В качестве второго примера возьмем “seek error rate”:
На самом деле (и это основная проблема отчетности S.M.A.R.T.), точное значение полей каждого атрибута понимает только поставщик. В моем случае Seagate использует логарифмическую шкалу для нормализации значения. Таким образом, «71» означает примерно одну ошибку на 10 миллионов запросов (10 в степени 7,1). Забавно, что самым худшим показателем за все время была одна ошибка на 1 миллион запросов (10 в 6-й степени).
Если я правильно понимаю, то это значит, что головки моего диска сейчас расположены точнее, чем раньше. Я не следил за этим диском внимательно, поэтому анализирую полученные данные весьма субъективно. Возможно накопитель просто надо было немного «обкатать» с тех пор как он был введен в эксплуатацию? Или может быть это следствие механического износа деталей и, следовательно, теперь имеет место меньшая сила трения? В любом случае, какова бы ни была причина, это значение является скорее показателем производительности, чем ранним предупреждением об ошибке. Так что меня оно не сильно беспокоит.
Помимо вышеприведенного и трех крайне подозрительных ошибок, записанных около шести месяцев назад, этот диск находится в удивительно хорошем состоянии (по данным S.M.A.R.T.) для стокового диска ноутбука, проработавшего более 1100 дней (26423 часа).
Из любопытства я провел этот же тест на гораздо более новом ноутбуке, оснащенном SSD:
Выше вы видите выходные данные абсолютно нового SSD. Данные понятны даже в случае отсутствия нормализации или метаинформации для данных конкретного поставщика, как в моем случае с “Unknown_SSD_Attribute.” Я могу только надеяться, что в последующих версиях smartctl в базе данных появятся данные об этой модели диска, и я смогу лучше определять потенциальные проблемы.
Проверьте свой SSD в Linux с помощью smartctl
До сих пор мы рассматривали данные, собранные во время нормальной работы накопителя. Однако протокол S.M.A.R.T. также поддерживает несколько команд для автономного тестирования для запуска диагностики по требованию.
Автономное тестирование может проводиться во время обычных операций с диском, если не было указано иное. Поскольку тест и запросы ввода-вывода хоста будут конкурировать, производительность диска упадет на время теста. Спецификация S.M.A.R.T. определяет несколько видов автономного тестирования:
Вот примеры, взятые с тех же дисков, что были выше. Я предлагаю вам угадать, где какой:
Сейчас производится проверка. Давайте дождемся завершения, чтобы посмотреть результат:
Проведем тот же тест на другом диске:
И еще раз, отправим в сон на две минуты и посмотрим результат:
Интересно, что в этом случае мы видим, что производители диска и компьютера, похоже, уже тестировали диск (на времени жизни в 0 часов и 12 часов). Я сам определенно был гораздо менее озабочен состоянием диска, чем они. Итак, поскольку я уже показал быстрые тесты, то и расширенный тоже запущу, чтобы посмотреть как это происходит.
Судя по всему на этот раз ждать придется гораздо дольше, чем при проведении короткого теста. Так что давайте посмотрим:
Best 10 Free Tools to Check SSD Health and Monitor Performance
SSDs are gradually intruding into the HDD market and replacing the role of regular hard disks in laptops and high-end desktops. Solid State Devices are offering high performance compared to traditional spinning hard disks. This flash-based memory device is consuming less battery power to read and write data with relatively high-speed that guarantees more battery life for your laptops.
The SSD system will boot in seconds and will be ready to start work in seconds. If you have apps installed on SSD, the drive loads your apps faster and copies Gigabytes of data within a few seconds. SSDs are offering high performance, high-speed, and less power consumption. Since this is a new technology, still SSDs are lagging behind hard disks in terms of lifespan and reliability.
Here is the list of best Windows and Mac Free Tools to Check SSD Health and Monitor Performance.
Crystal Disk Info
Crystal Disk Info helps you to monitor Solid State Hard Disk’s health status and temperature. You can use this tool to check your SSD and other Hard Disk types. Once you have installed this tool, this tool can monitor your system hard disk performance in real-time while you working on the system.
This tool can check your disk’s Read and Write speed and S.M.A.R.T. In addition to this, this open-source SSD tool can project a lot of information about your SSD. This software can show you the error rates of the disk, including “read error rate”. The performance measuring scales like seek time performance, throughput performance, etc. can be viewed in real-time with total Power-on time.
Crystal Disk Info can be very helpful to check SSD health and firmware updates. However, it cannot perform firmware updates automatically. The software does not support Linux-based systems either. Yet, it can be a great tool to make slight adjustments to your power management and notification settings.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows (Free)
Smartmonotools
The Smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor your hard disk. This tool is offering the real-time monitoring of your Hard Disk. Smartmonotools can analyze and warn you about potential disk degradation and failure.
You can monitor your SSD status with Smartmontools easily. You may need to add a “-d sat” or “-d ata” option on the command line for smartctl. It can also be done in the /etc/smartd.conf file. This will help to treat the drive with a SCSI device name as an ATA disk. Likewise, the “-d sat” command instructs the software to assume a SATL is in place. This makes it one of the most reliable SSD health tools for accurate readings.
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Hard Disk Sentinel
HDSentinel is a hard disk monitoring software that supports Windows, Linux, and Dos. This SSD monitoring tool is built to find, test, diagnose, and repair SSD problems. Disk Sentinel is also capable of displaying SSD health. Whether it is an internal or external SSD connected with USB or e-SATA, this tool can scan and recognize your SSD problems and generate reports with the possible fix to solve the errors.
After you install Hard Disk Sentinel, the tool runs in the background and check the SSD health status and warns the user if found any error. This SSD Monitoring tool can measure the disk transfer speed in real-time, which can be used as a benchmark or to detect possible hard disk failures, performance degradations.
Hard Disk Sentinel can help you to monitor SSD and HDD status and health, temperature, and S.M.A.R.T values. You can also use HDSentinel for data protection as it has the most sensitive disk health rating system. This way, you can detect even minute problems with ease.
Key Features:
Download the free version: Windows | Linux | DOS (Free)
Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox
The Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox is drive management software that allows you to monitor your drive health, estimated drive life remaining, and S.M.A.R.T. Attributes. This SSD Toolbox can run quick and full diagnostic scans to test the read and write functionality of an Intel SSD.
This tool can optimize the performance of an Intel SSD using Trim functionality and update the firmware on a supported Intel SSD. You can check and tune your system settings for optimal Intel SSD performance, power efficiency, and endurance. This tool supports a Secure Erase of your secondary Intel SSD. If you are looking for a new SSD, here are a couple of SSDs from Amazon that seems like best sellers.
Intel SSD Toolbox supports viewing device information for hard disk drives as well as non-Intel SSDs too. You can use the data from the software to optimize performance in RAID 0 and update firmware accordingly. It also allows you to run a full diagnostic scan of the disk to analyze its read and write functionality.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows | Mac | Linux (Free)
Crystal Disk Mark
If you need a real benchmarking tool to test your hard disk, Crystal Disk Mark is the right tool. This tool can test your Hard Disk in Sequential Reads/Writes, Random Reads/Writes, and QD32 Modes. You can also tweak the zoom ratio, and font scale, type, and face in the software. This makes one of the most visually intriguing SSD health tools.
If you want to compare your SSD performance, Read/Write speed in random and sequential with other manufacturers, or want to confirm your SSD is offering the same performance manufacturer specified, this is going to be the best open-source tool to check the disk or multiple disks based on their read-write performance.
Crystal Disk Mark works on Windows XP or later and Windows Server 2003 or above versions. You can easily monitor the peak and real-time performance profile with the software. If you are using Crystal Disk Mark to measure Network Drive, make sure to run it without Administrator rights. If the benchmark test fails on your SSD health check, enable the Administrator rights, and run it again.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows (Free)
Samsung Magician
Samsung Magician software features simple, graphical indicators show SSD health status and Total Bytes Written (TBW) at a glance. You can decide SATA and AHCI compatibility and status. The updated Benchmarking feature lets users test and SSDs to compare performance and speed.
This tool can use to optimize your Samsung SSD with three different profiles like Maximum Performance, Maximum Capacity, and Maximum Reliability along with detailed descriptions of each OS setting. Samsung Magician tools let you check the sequential and random read/write speeds. This tool helps to optimize SSD, make sure your system is running always fast and up to the benchmark.
The additional option can check TBW (Total Bytes Written), to assess the overall health and estimated remaining lifespan of your SSD. The System Compatibility Check to make sure no conflict with the SSD. The system and Secure Erase allow us to wipe out the SSD securely to avoid and sensitive data loss. If you are a Mac user, you are out of luck with this tool, Samsung magic is available only for Windows.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows | Linux (Free)
Crucial Storage Executive
Crucial SSD tool is a free SSD software to optimize the SSD performance. It can automatically update curial SSD firmware, perform an SSD health check and tweak for the best performanc.e. If you are worried about the security of your data, you can directly set or reset disk encryption password from Crucial SSD Software dashboard.
You can easily check storage space and monitor the drive’s temperature using Crucial Storage Executive. It also comes with a Momentum Cache feature to help SSD operations run up to 10 times faster. There is an option to clear all data stored on the drive as well. You can also access S.M.A.R.T. data using the application.
Crucial SSD software supports only Windows 7 and above versions (64-bit) at this moment. You can use it to manage and monitor Crucial MX-series, BX-series, M550, and M500 SSDs. You can also save the SSD’s data to a ZIP file and send it to the tech support team for a better analysis of the drive. It can also help to figure out and prevent potential problems.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows (Free)
Toshiba SSD Utility
SSD Utility is for Toshiba Drives, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based tool for managing OCZ SSDs. The dashboard provides a real-time overview of system status, capacity, interface, health, etc. In addition to this real-time overview, the SSD health tools keep the SSD firmware updated.
Toshiba Utility can show you how much life left in the SSD and correct the modes to achieve the best performance of SSD. The SSD tuner lets you tune the SSD for long-term life. The Toshiba SSD utility lets you find out if your SSD is hooked up to the suitable ports. This SSD Utility can set in the correct modes to achieve high performance.
The software is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. You can use Toshiba SSD Utility as a drive manager and optimization tool on your computer. Just make sure to run it with administrator privileges for accurate readings. You can also switch between various preset modes in the software as needed. This helps to optimize the drive’s performance and improve its longevity.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows | Mac (Free)
Kingston SSD Manager
Kingston SSD manager is designed for Kingston SSD users to monitor the performance and health status. The software can be used to update the SSD firmware, disk usage check, disk over-provision, etc. The Kingston software can securely erase all data from the SSSD without any trace to score all your information. The software supports only Windows 7 and above versions.
You can view all the relevant drive identification using Kingston SSD Manager. It includes S.M.A.R.T. data as well as model name, serial number, firmware version, and more details. You can even export detailed drive health and status report for further analysis. The Firmware tab gives you details like physical device path, volume information, and more.
Kingston SSD Manager can be used to manage TCG Opal and IEEE 1667 too. The software requires AHCI mode set in BIOS and administrator privileges to run smoothly. You can also use the SSD test manager application for over-provisioning with Host Protected Area. However, it will work for DC400 series only.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows | Free
SSD Life
SSD Life is a dedicated tool for Solid State Drives. This tool can measure your SSD’s lifespan. You can back up your data before your SSD take its last breath. This is the best tool to install on your computer and monitor SSD’s health. SSD Life can display the disk data in real-time to inform you about any critical defects.
SSDLife is checked with most of the SSD drives to check compatibility. This SSD tool can work with most SSD manufacturers such as Kingston, OCZ, Apple MacBook Air built-in SSD. You can get comprehensive information like its total throughput, the amount of free disk space, and more using the software. There is a health bar in SSDLife as well. This visually represents the state of the SSD drive, as well as it is estimated lifetime.
The intuitive SSD diagnostic tool gives you access to all S.M.A.R.T. parameters too. However, the free version keeps reports only for 30 days and does not show S.M.A.R.T. attributes either. You will need to upgrade to SSDLife Professional version for unlocking all the features.
Key Features:
Download for: Windows (free trial)
SsdReady
Do you ever wonder how long your SSD is going to last? This is a tool you must have to install on your computer and let it run in the background. This tool track daily Writes and the total usage of your SSD on a daily basis. SSDReady tool can predict how long your SSD going to live. This will give you enough time to prepare and shop around for the next SSD.
In addition to this, this Solid Disk tool can feedback you what to optimize if it finds too many disks writes, to extend your SSD life. SSDReady comes with all the required third-party components to give you the most accurate readings. It is very simple to use and has a user-friendly classical window interface. You can start an SSD test and analysis with one click.
You can set SSDReady to run automatically with each Windows startup or run it manually. In any case, it will not consume much system resources. The software has a PRO version as well, which gives you more data about your SSD drives.
Key Features:
SSDs are more fragile than HDs when you compare the lifespan. However, these lifetime monitor tools let you check the performance and lifespan of the drive. For Mac users, there are not many tools available to maintain and check performance for SSD. Most of the tools are build for Windows users. However, we listed the best SSD Tools for Mac to Maintain SSD Drive.
There are several tools available to Tweak SSD or enable TRIM on SSD to improve performance. These tools are recommended to use if you see any performance issue while working on your system with SSD. There are SSDTweker and TRIM Enabler to try on your SSD for performance improvement and we provided the list of tools on Tools to Tweak SSD article.
Once you made up your mind to buy SSD, please see our recommended list of SSDs for Mac, if you own a Windows system, please refer the list for best Solid State Drives for Windows. It is always better to keep an eye on your SSD. Install at least one SSD health monitoring tool for your laptop. To be safe, keep a backup disc for the entire system. Backup up your computer once in a month or a week based on your computer use.
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Top 8 SSD Tools to Check SSD Health and Performance [MiniTool Tips]
Are you utilizing SSD now? Do you know your SSD performance? In fact, you can conduct a test via professional SSD testing software. This post will show you top 8 SSD health check tools. You can obtain detailed information about these tools in MiniTool.
As it known to all, SSD is taking the place of HDD with its high performance. Therefore, most people utilize SSD as their operating system drive. In fact, as for SSD VS HDD, SSD has more advantages. Though SSDs are fast and more preferable, they are quite fragile.
Based on that fact, you should run SSD health check tool or optimization programs occasionally. By doing so, you can maximize your SSD’s performance and lifespan.
What Does an SSD Health Check Tool Do
Nowadays, there are many SSD testing programs on the market, and they boast different features for managing SSD. To be specific, what does an SSD health check tool do? Well, for most SSD health check tools, they can be used to test the SSD transfer speed, measure SSD performance, optimize SSD, etc. Some of them even allow you to erase SSD securely.
Given to that fact, you’d better read the software’s description carefully to check if it contains the feature you need.
The following will give you more information about what an SSD health check tool performs.
Check SSD Health
The first thing that an SSD health check tool does is to tell you how healthy your SSD is. Some SSD health check tools will show you the current state of your SSD and give you a health status, such as Crystal Disk Info.
While others such as MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition can detect how many bad sectors on your SSD, which can indicates your SSD condition. In a word, you can check whether your SSD is in good health easily with these tools.
Optimize SSD Performance
Some SSD tools enable you to carry out garbage collection and other parameters, which can improve the performance of the drive.
Most SSD health check tools allow you to optimize or tune your SSD for different demands such as Intel SSD Toolbox, Samsung Magician, etc. However, you may notice that some utilizes may improve the drive’s performance at the cost of losing some storage capacity.
Test SSD Speed
One of the basic features of SSD health check tools is SSD/Disk benchmark, which can measure your SSD performance by testing the SSD transfer speed. You will know whether the write/read data given by manufacturer is accurate after testing the speed of your SSD.
Besides, you will have a rough understanding of your SSD performance.
Secure Erase SSD
If an SSD includes sensitive information and needs to be wiped, erasing the data on the drive is a wise operation. The problem lies in that many SSD tools delete data by overwriting a drive for many times, causing accessing storage areas failure. For example, blocks can be marked as bad, or overprovisioning and wear leveling blocks.
While some SSD secure erase tools offer access to a hardware-based secure erase routine. During this process, SSD’s controller ensures that all the storage including the areas that cannot be normally and directly accessed can be cleaned entirely.
There are many SSD health check tools available in the market. Which one should you pick? 8 best SSD testers are introduced in this post. You can take them as your reference.
8 Best SSD Health Check Tools
Top 8 SSD Health Check Tools
MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a powerful partition manager & SSD health check tool, which can help you format drive, recover missing data, analyze disk usage, migrate OS to SSD/HD, etc. The Disk Benchmark feature enables you to measure disk performance by using variable transfer sizes and test lengths for both sequential and random read/write speeds.
In addition, you can finish the whole operation in a few clicks. With this wonderful SSD benchmark tool, you can test any manufacturer’ RAID controllers, storage controllers, hard drives and SSD drives. However, if the transfer size has a large span, the whole testing process may take you some time.
You can download MiniTool Partition Wizard by clicking the button below.
After downloading and installing MiniTool Partition Wizard, please follow the steps below to perform the disk benchmark operation.
Step 1: Click Launch Application to enter its main interface.
Step 2: Click on Disk Benchmark on the top of the main page.
Step 3: In the pop-up window, you can set HD/SSD disk testing parameters including testing drive, transfer size, queue number, cool down time, thread number, total length, and test mode according to your demand. After that, click on Start to execute the operation.
Step 4: Wait for the completion of operation. Different test settings can take you different time. After the operation finishes, you will get an intuitive table just as the below picture shown.
Just as you see, MiniTool Partition Wizard enables you to perform SSD benchmark with ease. Besides, you can view the results in a direct way. So, please don’t hesitate to download it.
Intel SSD Toolbox
Intel SSD Toolbox is a piece of drive management software that enables you to supervise your drive health, estimate the remaining drive life, as well as S.M.A.R.T. attributes. It can run fast and full diagnostic scans to examine the read and write functionality of an Intel SSD.
Besides, it allows you to update firmware on a supported Intel SSD and improve the performance of an Intel SSD by making using of Trim feature. Then, you are able to obtain the best Intel SSD performance, power efficiency and endurance by checking and adjusting system settings.
With Intel SSD Toolbox, you can perform a secure erase of your secondary Intel SSD. That’s all the features of Intel SSD Toolbox.
Samsung Magician
Compared with Intel SSD Toolbox, Samsung Magician is more complicated. That is because it looks more like a management suite than a simple application. Samsung Magician allows you to create profiles, adjust performance ratings, and set the maximum capacity and reliability.
-image from samsung.com
If you want to avoid any incompatibilities with operating system, you can either to update firmware or download the Magician. Actually, optimization and diagnostics are its basic features. What Samsung Magician offers through its RAID mode is the highlighted point.
The RAID mode can use 1GB of your system’s DRAM as cache for hot data or frequently-accessed data. In this way, the overall performance, especially the read speed will be improved.
More importantly, if you are not satisfied with the diagnostics results and your benchmarks, you can keep optimizing your Samsung SSD for your present OS through the OS optimization feature in Samsung Magician.
Crystal Disk Info
Crystal Disk Info is a piece of open software that can offer you the health and temperature information of your SSD or HDD. It is one of the free tools that have the capability to collect accurate data for both types of storage drives and work with drives from all manufacturers.
-image from crystalmark.info
At the same time, general information is also provided for you. Crystal Disk Info allows you to check firmware updates, port details, buffer size, read and write speeds, power consumption and S.M.A.R.T. information. You can test SSD speed through it with ease.
What’s more, you can also use it to do some slight adjustments of power management and notifications. The only disadvantages of Crystal Disk Info are that it won’t work on Linux-based systems and cannot execute firmware updates.
Smartmonotools
The Smartmonotools includes two utility programs (smartctl and smartd), which can help you control and monitor your hard drive. It offers you real time monitoring of your hard disk. What’s more, it will analyze and inform you about possible disk degradation and failure.
Hard Disk Sentinel
Hard Disk Sentinel is a hard disk monitoring tool that supports Windows, Linux and Dos operating system. It is designed to find, diagnose and repair SSD issues. Disk Sentinel is also able to show you SSD health condition. It can scan either an internal or external SSD connected with USB or e-SATA and find potential issues. After that, it will generate reports with the possible fixes to repair the errors.
After you install Hard Disk Sentinel, it will run in the background and check the SSD health condition automatically. If it finds any error, it will inform you immediately. With this SSD monitoring tool, you can test the hard disk’s transfer speed in real time.
By doing so, you will know your disk benchmark, potential hard disk failures, as well as performance degradations.
Toshiba SSD Utility
If you are using OCZ SSD now, Toshiba SSD Utility is possibly the best software that you can utilize regardless of your operating system. You can monitor your SSD in real time and obtain SSD information including SSD health, remaining life, storage space and overall performance very quickly via using Toshiba SSD Utility.
Additionally, it can also be used as a drive manager and optimization tool. You are able to switch between multiple modes based on your SSD or your rig’s intended use such as gaming, workstation, video editing and so on. By using these preset modes, you can improve the drive’s performance and increase its lifespan in various cases.
SSD Life
SSD Life mainly focuses on SSD health and remaining life instead of other metrics. It has great compatibility with major SSD manufacturers like Apple MacBook Air’s own SSD. It allows you to run diagnostics for SSD health, lifespan and overall performance. SSD Life will tell you accurate results and any important flaws that can influence the remaining lifespan or read/write speeds.
-image from toshiba.com
However, the free trial version only lasts seven days and has limitations on some features. After the trial expiration date reaches, you need to pay for it for later-on using.
Conclusion
Now, all the contents about SSD health check tools have been told to you. It’s your turn to make a choice. You can pick one according to your demand. If you pick MiniTool Partition Wizard, you can check SSD health by following the given steps in the post. While for other SSD health check
tools, you should follow the on-screen steps to finish the operation.
SSD Health Check FAQ
There are 5 signs indicate that your SSD is failing.
If these signs appear, it indicates that your SSD is failing and you need to take some measure.