How to Check SSD Health (Free Tools)

What “SSD health” actually means

An SSD stores your files in flash memory cells. Every time data is written, those cells wear down a tiny bit. To make up for that, the drive keeps a pool of spare cells and swaps them in when a worn one stops working.

Health tools read a small report that the drive keeps about itself. That report is called S.M.A.R.T., short for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. NVMe drives keep a very similar health log. The numbers that matter most are:

• how much of the drive’s rated lifespan you have already used,
• how many spare cells are left,
• how many errors the drive has logged,
• and how hot it runs.

SSDs also fail differently from old hard drives. A hard drive often gives you weeks of clicking noises. An SSD can run perfectly for years and then stop responding within a day, usually because of a controller or firmware fault rather than slow wear.

Which type of SSD do you have?

Two kinds are common in 2026. SATA SSDs look like thin 2.5-inch boxes. NVMe SSDs are small sticks that plug into an M.2 slot on the motherboard. The difference matters here, because the built-in Windows check only reads NVMe drives.

To see which one you have, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and click your disk. The model name and type appear in the top right corner.

Check SSD health in Windows 11 (no download)

The fastest check is already inside Windows 11. It takes less than a minute and needs no extra software.

Windows shows three values:

• Estimated remaining life is the manufacturer’s estimate of how much of the drive’s lifespan is left.
• Available spare is the share of spare cells that are still unused. 100% means the reserve is untouched.
• Temperature is the current temperature of the whole drive in °C.

If you don’t see a Drive health section at all, your drive is probably a SATA SSD or sits inside a USB case. Windows only monitors NVMe SSDs, so move on to the next section.

Windows also raises its own alert when a drive crosses a danger line. Microsoft lists three critical warnings: Spare capacity is low, Reliability is degraded and Drive is set to read-only. You can read what each one means on Microsoft’s support page about storage critical warnings. If you ever see one, jump straight to the section “What to do before data is lost”.

CrystalDiskInfo: the free tool to start with

CrystalDiskInfo is the tool most people reach for first, and for good reason. It is free, open source, and reads SATA SSDs, NVMe SSDs and hard drives from nearly every brand. It also turns the raw S.M.A.R.T. data into a simple status you can understand at a glance.

How to use it

The status has four colors. Good is blue, Caution is yellow, Bad is red and Unknown is grey. Caution and Bad both mean it is time to back up, which we cover later.

Download it only from the official site. Fake “free disk tools” pages are a common way to pick up unwanted software.

One limit to know about: an SSD inside a USB enclosure often shows nothing, because the USB adapter hides the drive’s health data from Windows. If your external drive appears empty here, that is usually the adapter, not a dead drive.

How to read the numbers

You don’t need to understand every line. These are the values worth a look. The names below are the NVMe ones, and SATA SSDs report similar things under slightly different names.

TBW means “terabytes written”. It is the amount of data the manufacturer says the drive can take during its warranty, and you will find it on the drive’s spec sheet. Power On Hours simply tells you how old the drive is. It is not a health score by itself.

SATA SSDs often use brand-specific names such as Wear Leveling Count, Media Wearout Indicator or Remaining Life. You don’t have to decode them. CrystalDiskInfo converts them into the single Health Status percentage.

One odd number rarely means danger. Look for trends instead: a value that gets worse each time you check. Some healthy drives also show a few entries in “Number of Error Information Log Entries”, so that line alone is not a reason to panic.

PowerShell and smartmontools for a deeper look

PowerShell, already built into Windows

If you prefer typing, Windows can report health without any download. Right-click the Start button, choose Terminal (Admin) and run these two commands, one after the other:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus
Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object Wear, Temperature, PowerOnHours, ReadErrorsTotal

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus

FriendlyName        MediaType HealthStatus OperationalStatus
------------        --------- ------------ -----------------
Samsung SSD 980 1TB SSD       Healthy      OK

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object Wear, Temperature, PowerOnHours, ReadErrorsTotal

Wear Temperature PowerOnHours ReadErrorsTotal
---- ----------- ------------ ---------------
   3          35         3214               0

PS C:\Windows\system32> 

The first command shows the overall verdict: Healthy, Warning or Unhealthy. The second shows wear, temperature and error counts. Some drives, and most USB enclosures, return empty fields here. That only means the information isn’t available, not that something is wrong.

smartmontools for power users

smartmontools is a free, open-source toolkit that reads S.M.A.R.T. data from almost any drive. Its command-line tool is called smartctl. It works on Windows and Linux, and on macOS too, though some Mac internal drives expose only limited data. Here is the basic routine:

smartctl --scan
smartctl -a /dev/nvme0

The first command lists your drives. The second prints the full report for the NVMe drive. You will see a line saying the overall health test result is PASSED. Treat that as the lowest bar, not as a clean bill of health. Read Percentage Used, Available Spare and Media and Data Integrity Errors as well.

Free tools from SSD makers

Most big brands ship their own free utility. These tools know their own drives well, so they can show exact wear figures and offer firmware updates. They only work with that maker’s drives, though.

Samsung Magician covers Samsung SSDs and includes a drive health view, firmware updates and a data migration tool. Kingston SSD Manager does the same for Kingston drives, with health, usage and temperature information. Western Digital, SanDisk, Kioxia, SK hynix and Transcend offer similar utilities, and you can find them on each brand’s support page.

A word of caution about firmware updates: they can fix bugs, but an update that fails midway is risky. Back up your files first, and don’t interrupt the update.

Warning signs that an SSD is failing

Sometimes the tools stay green while the drive already misbehaves. Pay attention if you notice any of these:

• Files that suddenly won’t open, or open as corrupted.
• Files or folders that vanish without you deleting them.
• The PC freezes while saving, copying or installing something.
• Apps and games crash, or you get blue screens that mention the disk.
• Windows runs a disk repair at almost every startup.
• The drive suddenly becomes read-only.
• The PC no longer boots, or the drive disappears from the BIOS and comes back after a restart. This is a very bad sign.
• Disk errors in Event Viewer. Open Windows Logs › System and look for Disk events with IDs 7, 11, 51 or 153.

Slow doesn’t always mean dying

A slow SSD is not automatically a failing one. A nearly full drive slows down, and so does an overheating one, because it throttles its speed to cool off. Check the free space and the temperature first. If both are fine and the drive is still slow and showing errors, take the warning seriously.

What to do before data is lost

How you react depends on what you see. Use this as a quick guide:

The classic advice is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else. It sounds like a lot, but even a simple version, your PC plus an external drive plus a cloud folder, covers almost every case.

There is one more reason to back up early. When you delete files on an SSD, a feature called TRIM usually wipes them for good, so the “undelete” tools that worked on hard drives often find nothing. Recovery from a dead SSD is also hard and expensive. A backup is far cheaper.

How to help your SSD last longer

A few habits cost nothing and keep the drive in better shape:

• Keep 10 to 20 percent free. A nearly full drive is slower and has less room to spread out writes.
• Keep it cool. Use the heatsink that came with your motherboard and keep air moving through the case.
• Shut down properly. Hard power-offs raise the Unsafe Shutdowns count and can damage data in flight.
• Update the firmware when the maker publishes a fix, after a backup.
• Leave TRIM on. Windows turns it on by default. To check, open a terminal and run fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify. A result of 0 means TRIM is working.
• Check health every three months. Put a reminder in your calendar and take a screenshot each time, so you can compare results.