If you're having trouble with the hard drive in your Toshiba computer, turning to a diagnostic program is the first step in determining the problem. Many Toshiba computers come with diagnostic software pre-installed. Not all Toshiba diagnostic programs are intended for all computers; before running a diagnostic tool, first check that it is appropriate for your model and operating system. If you can't find an appropriate Toshiba program, you can try generic Windows or third-party utilities.
Pre-Installed Tools
When it comes to diagnosing and resolving problems with their computers, most Mac users rely on Disk Utility and the tools that come with Mac OS X. Disk Utility can resolve a number of problems—such as damaged hard drive directory structures and permissions problems with Mac OS X’s system files.
If you haven't made any changes to your Toshiba's operating system or installed software, then you'll still have all the Toshiba-branded software included. This can include diagnostic tools and even repair tools. To check for pre-installed software, open your Start Menu and type 'Toshiba.' Any Toshiba-branded program will show up. If you're using Windows 7, all programs will be located in the 'Toshiba' folder in the Start Menu.
PC Health Monitor
The Toshiba PC Health Monitor is designed to assess the overall health of your machine, not just your hard drive. In terms of hard drive maintenance, the PC Health Monitor provides a status update on your hard drive and, if enabled, a 3D sensor to monitor the mechanical health of your hard drive.
- Windows and Mac offer utilities to test and repair hard drives and Seagate provides utlities for Windows. Seagate diagnostic tool (Windows only) Download Seatools for Windows and follow the steps below to help determine the health of your device.
- I'm looking for a tool to simply try and read every sector of the hard drive in my iMac. In the PC world, I simply download the diagnostic tool from the hard drive manufacturer's website, burn it to a cd, boot it and let it run for a few hours.
Windows Diagnostic Tool
Toshiba's Windows Diagnostic Tool may be already installed on older laptops. It's designed for testing IDE & SATA hard drives when you suspect a problem with your hard drive. You install and run it in Windows like any other program. There are two diagnostic modes: a quick test, which takes a few minutes and does random read/write tests, and the comprehensive test, which can take up to an hour and a half and does a surface scan.
DOS Diagnostic Tool
On older laptops, like Windows XP or Windows 95, if you want to test your hard drive without booting up Windows – or perhaps because you can't boot Windows – try Toshiba's DOS Diagnostic Tool, if it's already installed on your laptop. As with the Windows diagnostic tool, you can do a quick or comprehensive test.
Non-Toshiba Tools
If you're not finding what you need from Toshiba, you might try another solution. You can use the native Windows feature Check Disk, available under your hard drive's Tools tab. HDDScan is a free, third-party solution to check for disk errors on your Windows computer, regardless of manufacturer.
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Hard drives use S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to gauge their own reliability and determine if they’re failing. You can view your hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. data and see if it has started to develop problems.
Mac Hard Drive Diagnostic
Hard drives don’t live forever, and you often can’t see the end coming. Fortunately, most modern drives support S.M.A.R.T., so they can at least do some basic self-monitoring. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have an easy-to-use built-in tool that shows your hard disk’s S.M.A.R.T. data. You can view a very basic S.M.A.R.T. status from the Command Prompt, but to really see this information, you’ll need to grab a third-party app.
Check S.M.A.R.T. Status with CrystalDiskInfo
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CrystalDiskInfo (free) is an easy-to-use, open-source program that can shows the S.M.A.R.T. status details reported by your hard drives. You can download an installable or portable version—the choice is up to you.
Once you’ve got CrystalDiskInfo running, it’s a pretty straightforward app. The main view shows the S.M.A.R.T. status information for your hard drives. If everything is working properly, you should see the status “Good“ displayed. In the image below, just under the menu bar, you can see that all three drives in our system report a “Good” status and you can even view the temperature of each drive. Other statuses you might see include “Bad” (which usually indicates a drive that’s dead or near death), “Caution” (which indicates a drive that you should most likely be thinking about backing up and replacing), and “Unknown” (which just means that S.M.A.R.T. information could not be obtained).
You can also view a list of detailed information about each drive, but unless you’re a pro—or you’re troubleshooting something very specific—it likely won’t mean much to you. If you’re interested, though, the Wikipedia page for S.M.A.R.T. maintains a pretty good list of these attributes, along with how they can be interpreted.
There’s really not a lot more to the app, but there is one other feature worth pointing out. If you are particularly concerned about the health of a drive, you can set CrystalDiskInfo to start with Windows and run as a background app. While it’s running this way, CrystalDiskInfo will send a notification to alert you if the S.M.A.R.T. status of any drive changes. Just open the “Function” menu and toggle both the “Resident” and “Startup” options on.
Check S.M.A.R.T. Status at the Command Prompt
You can also view a very basic S.M.A.R.T. status from the Windows Command Prompt. To open the Command Prompt, hit Start, type “Command Prompt,” and then press Enter.
A the prompt, type (or copy and paste) the following command, and then press Enter:
If everything is working properly, you should see the status “OK” displayed for each hard drive on your system. Other statuses—such as “Bad,” “Caution,” or “Unknown”—can indicate problems with your drive or errors retrieving S.M.A.R.T. information.
Help, My Hard Drive Is Dying!
Toshiba Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool Windows 10
If the S.M.A.R.T. status indicates that you have an error, it does not necessarily mean that your hard drive is going to fail immediately. However, if there’s a S.M.A.R.T. error, it would be wise to assume that your hard drive is in the process of failing. A complete failure could come in a few minutes, a few months, or—in some cases—even a few years. However long it takes, you should not trust the hard drive with your data in the meantime.
Ensure you have up-to-date backups of all your files stored on another media, such as an external hard drive or optical discs. Obviously, this is good advice whether you know the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives or not. Problems—including drive failure—can happen at any time, and without warning. With your files properly backed up, you should look into replacing your hard drive as soon as possible. You simply cannot consider a hard drive that fails a S.M.A.R.T. test to be reliable. Even if your hard drive doesn’t die completely, it could corrupt portions of your data. You might also consider using the chkdsk tool in Windows to diagnose and repair any related problems that it can.
Of course, hardware isn’t perfect—hard drives can fail without any S.M.A.R.T. warnings. However, S.M.A.R.T. can give you some advance warning when a hard drive isn’t performing the way it should.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Windows 10
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