How to Check Laptop SSD Health on Windows 11 (and Mac)

Short answer

Start in Settings, because it takes a minute and needs no download. If it shows nothing, run one PowerShell command, then use the free CrystalDiskInfo app or your drive maker’s app for the full picture. You want three things: no warning from the drive, no read or write errors, and plenty of rated life left.

One warning before you follow older guides. Many pages still tell you to run wmic diskdrive get status. Microsoft says WMIC has now been removed from all supported versions of Windows 11 and can no longer be added back as an optional feature. On an up-to-date laptop that command won’t work, and it never told you much anyway: only OK or Pred Fail. Use the PowerShell commands below instead.

No website can do this for you. Browsers can’t read your drive’s health data, and that includes our own laptop test. It checks the keyboard, trackpad, webcam, speakers, screen and ports, while the steps here cover the drive. If some keys don’t register, see laptop keyboard keys not working.

Step 1: Check Drive health in Windows 11 Settings

1. Open Settings and choose System, then Storage.
2. Under Storage management, open Advanced storage settings and choose Disks & volumes.
3. Select your drive and click Properties.
4. Read the Drive health section.

You should see three values:

• Estimated remaining life: how much of the drive’s rated life is left, as a percentage.
• Available spare: how much reserve capacity the drive has left to replace worn-out cells.
• Temperature: the current reading.

If Windows finds a problem, you may see a desktop notice that a storage device may be at risk of failure, or a warning here that reliability is degraded. Back up straight away if you see either.

If the section is empty, don’t panic. This feature covers NVMe SSDs only, so a SATA SSD or a hard drive won’t show it. That says nothing about the drive’s condition. Go to step 2.

Step 2: Use PowerShell

This works on more drives, and everything it needs is built in. Right-click the Start button and open Terminal (Admin). Then run:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus

HealthStatus should say Healthy. The other possible values are Warning, Unhealthy and Unknown. Microsoft’s documentation shows OK as the normal OperationalStatus.

For more detail, run this next:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object DeviceId, Temperature, Wear, ReadErrorsUncorrected, WriteErrorsUncorrected, PowerOnHours

• Read and write errors: this is the column to care about. A Microsoft storage engineer wrote that any drive reporting read or write failures should be considered at risk.
• Temperature: the same engineer said this is most useful when compared with drives of the same model, because normal temperatures differ between models.
• Wear: Microsoft points to this field for telling whether an SSD is nearing the end of its use, but it doesn’t define the scale. Use the labelled Percentage Used figure from step 3 instead.
• Blank fields: not every drive reports every counter. A blank is missing data, not a good or bad result.

Step 3: Get full SMART data with a free tool

SMART is the health record the drive keeps about itself. Two kinds of tool can read it.

• Your drive maker’s app. Samsung Magician, WD Dashboard, Kingston SSD Manager and Crucial Storage Executive are the usual ones. They show health and temperature, and they can install firmware updates. To find the brand, open Device Manager and expand Disk drives. The maker of the laptop is often not the maker of the drive.
• CrystalDiskInfo. A long-running Windows utility that supports NVMe drives on Windows 10 and later. Download it only from the developer’s site, crystalmark.info. Some guides warn that third-party disk tools can bring malware with them, so skip lookalike download pages.

What the results mean

• CrystalDiskInfo says Good: nothing has crossed a warning line. The developer stresses that this doesn’t make backups optional, because drives can fail with no clear warning.
• CrystalDiskInfo says Caution: on an SSD this often means remaining life is at 10% or less. The developer says this doesn’t necessarily mean the drive will stop soon, but there is no guarantee it will last either. Back up and plan a replacement.
• CrystalDiskInfo says Bad: a value has fallen below the maker’s own limit, and the drive may no longer work normally. Copy your data off now.
• Percentage Used: this counts up, unlike remaining life. Intel says 100 means the estimated endurance has been used up, but that may not indicate a failure, and the number can go past 100. Treat it as a signal to plan ahead, not as a deadline.
• Available Spare: this starts at 100 and falls. On Intel’s drives the threshold is 10%, and dropping below it raises a critical warning. Other makers may set it differently, so compare it with the threshold your tool shows.
• Media and data integrity errors: this should be zero. Any number that keeps rising is more worrying than a high wear figure.

A percentage is an estimate from the drive’s own counters. It can’t be turned into a number of months, and CrystalDiskInfo’s developer says the same about their tool. A good reading on a used laptop also tells you about the drive only as it stands today.

Warning signs a health score can miss

SMART isn’t perfect, so take these seriously even if every tool says Healthy:

• Files that won’t open, or photos that load partly corrupted.
• I/O device errors when you copy or save.
• Blue screens during disk activity.
• The laptop freezing for several seconds when you open apps or files.
• The drive going read-only, so you can open files but not save them.
• The drive disappearing from the BIOS or UEFI setup after a restart.

To rule out file system damage, run chkdsk /scan in an administrator Terminal. It checks the file system, not wear, so a clean result doesn’t prove the hardware is fine.

Checking SSD health on a Mac

1. Hold Option, click the Apple menu and choose System Information.
2. Under Hardware, select Storage, or NVMExpress on models that list it.
3. Select the drive and find S.M.A.R.T. status.

Verified means no reported problem. Failing means back up now and plan a replacement. There is no percentage here, just that one word. For wear figures, you need a third-party tool such as smartmontools. First Aid in Disk Utility checks the file system, which is a useful but separate test.

When to repair or replace

• Healthy, no errors: nothing to do. Keep your backup current and check again every few months.
• Life running low, no errors: no rush, but plan the swap. Make sure a second copy of your files exists on another drive or in the cloud. Copying to another folder on the same SSD doesn’t count, since a failing drive can take every partition with it.
• Warning, Caution, or errors rising: back up today, then update the firmware with the maker’s app if one is available and recheck.
• Bad, Unhealthy, read-only or vanishing drive: copy off what you can first, and stop running long tests on it. Then replace the drive. If the data matters and the drive won’t read, talk to a data recovery service before you try anything else.

Before you buy a replacement, check that the drive can be replaced at all. Search your exact model’s service manual for “SSD” or “M.2”. On some laptops the storage is soldered to the board, and close variants of one model can differ: Dell’s community answers note that a 2-in-1 version can have soldered storage while the clamshell with the same number does not. Also confirm whether the slot takes NVMe or SATA, and which M.2 length it fits.

Don’t judge the drive by age alone. Some guides suggest replacing an SSD at two or three years old, but we found no good basis for that as a rule. A drive with low wear and no errors doesn’t need replacing because of a date.

If you are buying a used laptop

Ask the seller to open Settings or CrystalDiskInfo while you watch, and read the health, the hours powered on and the total data written. A nearly new laptop with heavy use on the drive is worth a question. Then run the laptop test, and keep the used laptop checklist open for BIOS locks, ports and the hinge.

The drive is only one part of the check. Our guide on how to test laptop hardware covers memory and the makers’ built-in diagnostics, and the laptop battery health guide shows the other wear figure worth reading before you pay.