how to run a disk check on an external drive

HOW TO RUN A DISK CHECK ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE HOW TO
HOW TO RUN A DISK CHECK ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE FREE

external hard drives and USB flash drives), sequential read/writes will matter more. If everything is working properly, you should see the status OK displayed for each hard drive on your system. A the prompt, type (or copy and paste) the following command, and then press Enter: wmic diskdrive get status. virus shield, firewall, torrents, instant messengers etc) without any major slowdowns.įor an operating system boot drive, 4K random read speeds are the most important, followed by 4K random write speed.įor a mass storage drive (e.g. To open the Command Prompt, hit Start, type Command Prompt, and then press Enter.

This drive is a WD My Book, and has all of my photos, as well as lots of other important data.

HOW TO RUN A DISK CHECK ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE FREE

A hard drive with higher 4K numbers will able to multi-task better, so your operating system will be more responsive and you can run more background programs (e.g. I just ran Windows Disk Check (windows 7) on my external hard drive, and after running for several hours, the green bar finally reached the end, and underneath the bar it says 34285271 free clusters processed. High sequential read speeds will also shorten the loading time for large programs such as modern computer games and video editing software.ĤK random read/write - measures how fast your hard drive is able to access small files that are randomly scattered across it. Open Control Panel -> click on the Security and Maintenance icon -> expand the Maintenance -> look under Drive status.

HOW TO RUN A DISK CHECK ON AN EXTERNAL DRIVE HOW TO

How to Check Disk Errors in Windows Security and Maintenance. Simply click on Scan drive to have CHKDSK scan the selected. Note that you must be signed in as an administrator to be able to run a scan to check a drive for errors, as some of the following methods may require to do so. If the system did not find any errors on the disk, you will instead see a message stating You don’t need to scan this drive, although you can still go ahead with the scan. installing programs, copying videos, programs, photo albums or music libraries from one hard drive to another). If Windows detects any errors or other problems on the selected disk, it will simply ask you to check the disk. Sequential read/write - measures the speed of your hard drive when it comes to the transfer of large files (e.g. Seq is short for sequential (read/write speeds), and 4K refers to random (read/write speeds). The numbers that will matter to most people are the ones in the 'Seq' and '4K' row (outlined in red above).

Simple to use with a clean interface - Easy-to-understand benchmark results without excessive technical details (see screenshot below):.

Works like a charm with almost everything - Hard disk drives, solid state drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives and even memory cards.

While they are all dependable hard drive benchmark tools, we recommend CrystalDiskMark over the others for the following reasons: Let's begin by introducing you to the big names in hard drive speed test software: Atto Disk Benchmark, CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune. How to Run a SSD Benchmark or HDD Benchmark In that case, the only sure-fire method to determine your real-world hard disk speed is to put it through a reliable hard drive performance test.Īnd once you have the benchmark results, we'll point out what are the numbers to look for and what they mean in plain English. speeds attained under unrealistic scenarios). Ask any techie and chances are they will tell you that hard disk speeds given by manufacturers are often overstated or misleading (e.g.

How to run a disk check on an external drive