

You could have a similar Windows setup from USB with these top Linux distros.Here is a list of best free SSD health check software for Windows. This allows you to connect to any computer and have the same setup. For older devices, it may be time to consider a new computer.Īnother option you may consider is removing the faulty drive and working completely from a USB drive or external hard drive. You could buy a new hard drive and install it in your current computer, which is ideal if your device is still fairly new, such as one or two years. As someone who lost a week-long project due to a sudden drive failure, keep those important files backed up in real time. If you’re trying to get the last bit of life out of your drive, make sure you’re saving any open files regularly to an external drive or a cloud-based storage service.

If you can create a full disk image, you likely won’t have to worry about this though. To make it easier to make the transition easier from an old drive to a new one, create a list of everything you need to install along with any product keys.

You can do this using the defrag tool built into Windows. If you feel like your non-SSD hard drive is slowing down, then you should check to see how fragmented it is. SSDs work a little differently, and while they never need defragmentation (because fragmentation relates to where the data is physically stored on the drive, which isn’t a factor on SSD), they do sometimes need optimizing.

Traditional SATA hard drives may have largely made way for much faster solid-state drives, but they’re still very popular and remain an affordable way to store things like pictures, videos and other non-strenuous file types. On Dell and HP laptops, you should be able to check hard drive health by going to the BIOS and looking for “Diagnostics.” 2. The BIOS is also a good place to see whether the hard drive you want to check is actually being detected by your PC/motherboard.
