Steps and tools to test your computer’s hard drive health

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• Check drive status from Settings
• Use PowerShell for a fast health summary
• What this check does — and what it doesn’t
• About older command-line advice

You can check the health of many modern drives in Windows 11 without opening a command prompt. A few clicks in Settings will surface health metrics for supported NVMe SSDs and trigger warnings if the drive shows trouble.

Check drive status from Settings

Open the Settings app and navigate to System, then to Storage. From there, follow the link for Advanced storage settings and choose Disks & volumes.

1. Pick the drive you want to inspect.
2. Click Properties to view health details.

For compatible NVMe solid-state drives, Windows 11 can display metrics such as estimated remaining life, available spare capacity and temperature. The interface will also flag problems like low spare capacity, declining reliability or a switch to read-only mode.

Use PowerShell for a fast health summary

If you prefer a single command, open a PowerShell tab in Windows Terminal and run Get-PhysicalDisk. Look at the HealthStatus column for an immediate indication.

The command can return one of four values: Healthy, Warning, Unhealthy or Unknown. Each gives a quick sense of whether a drive needs attention.

What this check does — and what it doesn’t

These built-in diagnostics are useful, but they are not universal. Microsoft’s health reporting is focused on NVMe drives only.

If your SATA SSD or a traditional hard disk shows little or no data in Settings, that absence does not mean the hardware is problem-free. Use caution and consider third‑party tools or vendor diagnostics for drives that are not NVMe-compatible.

About older command-line advice

Some older tutorials recommend running wmic diskdrive get status. That tool has been removed from supported versions of Windows 11. Microsoft now advises using modern alternatives such as PowerShell for disk inspection.