Have you ever wondered if your solid state drive is working properly, if is it heating up, if is it overloaded, and if is it performing at its best?
It is crucial to monitor your SSD because it houses your operating system and a lot of important data.
Unfortunately, there is no built-in Windows utility to perform this for us.
CrystalDiskInfo comes to the rescue in this situation.
This free software utility will display a wealth of useful information about any storage device connected to your motherboard and is especially useful for SSD users.
To look under the hood of your hard drive, you’ll need to download a free copy of CrystalDiskInfo first.
When you start the software, it will provide you with a lot of information about the selected drive.
All the information in the box at the top of the screen is crucial, especially the small box called Health Status.
This is a translation of SMART data, which is a self-reporting feature that all drives now have and can detect when something is wrong with a component.
If the health status box contains anything other than Good, one of the SMART numbers in the table at the bottom of the screen will be highlighted for your attention, regardless of the exact problem, you should start looking for a new drive.
Another valuable piece of information is in the upper right corner, which indicates the amount of data written to the disk.
This is crucial to know because most, if not all, SSDs have an endurance rating that tells you how much time you have left in them.
You might also be interested in how many times it’s been turned on and how long it’s been running, but none of these stats will affect the drive’s performance.
The box called Transfer Mode in the middle contains some useful information to ensure your drive is running at maximum capacity.
With so many M.2 slots on today’s motherboards, double-check that the slot you’re using is a real X4 slot, as opposed to the slower X2 slot
Finally, most drive manufacturers include their drive management software that will show you the actual SMART data.
For example, Intel’s Memory and Storage Tool can do this, but most users will have to do a lot of Googling to figure out what all those numbers mean, and the allowed values vary from drive to drive and company to company.
So take our advice and use Crystal Disk Info, it’s easier to work with and understand.
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