Checking SSD drives and restoring MicroSD cards. SSD disk check: the best utilities for diagnosing and improving performance

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have become a fixture in our lives. Granting the user many advantages compared to traditional HDDs (higher speed of reading and writing information, quiet operation, low power consumption and high resistance to mechanical damage), they are, however, not without a number of disadvantages (for example, shorter operating time compared to from HDD). Accordingly, their condition must be monitored from time to time in order to timely track negative changes in their functionality. In this material I will tell you how to check an SSD disk for errors, how tools will help us find out its performance and how to use them.

Limited SSD resource

If you are wondering about checking an SSD disk for errors and performance, it means that a situation may have arisen in which your SSD has stopped functioning normally. This is primarily due to the fact that SSD ( Solid State Drive - solid state drive) allows you to write information to yourself a limited number of times (the resource of competitors SSD - HDD drives in this regard is not limited). Typically, manufacturers provide a warranty on their SSD drives for a period of 3 years (or for the volume of recorded data of 35 terabytes of data, which is approximately equal to 20 gigabytes per day). Those who actively use their SSD drive (on various 24/7 servers, etc.) may experience faster failure of SSD devices.

Well, those users who work with their PC in normal, “household” mode can enjoy the fast operation of their SSD for 5 years or more. In the last article, I described in detail setting up an SSD for Windows 10; I recommend setting up the disk for those using this OS.

How to check an SSD disk for errors and performance - list of programs

If you do not need to know the performance of the SSD drive, then you should use the functionality of the appropriate programs that will allow you to test the ssd for errors. Below I will list these programs and give their corresponding characteristics:

CrystalDiskInfo program

It is a free utility that will check the read-write speed of your disk, displays its overall health, temperature, supports S.M.A.R.T (hard disk health assessment technology) and much more. This CrystalDiskInfo program has two main versions (installable and portable), and in the case of the installed version, you can monitor the status of your disks in real time using the program icon in the system tray. If the pressing question is how to check an ssd for bad sectors, then the CrystalDiskInfo program will effectively help you with this.

1. To use the program, download it, install and run.
2. The program will scan your hard drive to assess its condition, errors, etc., and then give you the result.
3. All main actions are concentrated in the “Service” tab of the main menu (in particular, if necessary, there you can set the disk rescan function).

SSD Life Program

The SSD Life program can also help us determine the performance and errors of the SSD. This shareware utility is written specifically for working with SSD drives, allowing you to proactively monitor declines in their performance. As in the case of CrystalDiskInfo, this program has two versions - portable (produces a report on the status of the disk immediately upon launch, without additional installation), and installation, which displays the status of the disk in real time so that the user can monitor the situation in advance.

The working window of the program is extremely simple, on it you will see the predicted operating time of your disk, an assessment of its condition, how long it has already worked, and so on. To update report data, use the corresponding keys below.

SSDRready program

SSD diagnostics can also be carried out using the SSDReady program, created specifically for monitoring the condition of your SSD drive, assessing its potential operating time and other relevant statistics. It keeps track of the amount of data written and read from the disk every day, requires its permanent work in the background and is a good option for checking the SSD disk for errors and overall performance.

DiskCheckup program

In testing an SSD hard drive for speed and performance, we can also use the DiscCheckup utility, which allows us to monitor the S.M.A.R.T attributes of an individual hard drive. As in the case of the programs described above, this application shows hard drive statistics, allowing you to track the health status of the latter. The functionality of this product is essentially no different from the programs described above.

How to check an Ssd drive (Methods/Programs)

In this article, we will look at methods of how to check an SSD drive and will reveal information about what methods you can use to check an SSD drive; we will describe various methods and programs. SSD disk (from English solid-state drive) is not a mechanical data storage device, unlike HDD (from English Hard disk drive) has higher performance times

access to information. SSD drives are less susceptible to aggressive environments since they have no moving mechanical parts. SSD disks can be built using different technologies, NAND SSD is a disk made using non-volatile memory technology and RAM SSD is disks that are made using volatile memory technology, built on the principle of a random access memory device (RAM) of a personal computer.
Methods for diagnosing an SSD drive differ from a more familiar HDD drive, since they, in principle, work completely differently: in a hard drive, the data plates spin on a spindle and are read by a magnetic head, and a solid-state drive operates on the basis of a high-speed FLASH drive.

How to check an SSD drive. Important points and principles of testing.

To check an SSD drive, you need to clearly understand the principles and diagnostic methods! A very important point and a common mistake made by a layman when checking an SSD drive is that the solid-state drive cannot be checked for BAD sectors (bad, damaged disk sectors) since these tests do not give anything and negatively affect the service life, absolutely not defragment such a disk.

To diagnose a solid-state drive, you can use various diagnostic programs. All programs are similar and the main thing is to understand the essence of the work of the tested indicators, knowing which you can choose any program you like. In this article we will describe the Crystal Disk Info program. The program exists for various platforms and operating system bits, as well as with various installation options. Using Crystal Disk Info, you can check for any problems using S.M.A.R.T technology. S.M.A.R.T (self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology) is a self-monitoring and diagnostic technology built into the disk hardware that allows you to view the current state of the disk, as well as predict the possible time of disk failure. S.M.A.R.T is the simplest and really good method for diagnosing a disk. After launching the Crystal Disk Info program, its window will display all the information about your SSD, this is the firmware version, the operating interface, as well as what features and technologies the disk supports. If there are several disks installed in the system, then the program will display tabs with the names of disk models, between which you can respectively switch and view information. To update disk information, you need to go to the Tools drop-down menu and select Update, or press the F5 key on your keyboard.

The most important and significant point of the program is the area called “Status”, which shows the current state of the disk as a percentage. To start checking, you need to click on the button located just below the status inscription. An excellent indicator is considered to be 100%; with such indicators, the icon is blue and the inscription “good” is displayed in the program window. One hundred percent status means that there are no problems with the drive tested at the moment, and if we look in the program at the list of tested SSD indicators, we will see that no problems were detected from all S.M.A.R.T parameters. If, after passing the test, the icon is yellow or red, and the inscription is respectively cautious or bad, and the condition is no longer 100%, then this indicates that the disk has some problems. The red color indicates that the disk may fail in the near future. Of course, the SSD disk can be used, but there is already a huge probability of data loss and you need to rely on its replacement.

A very important parameter of an SSD disk, which also needs to be given close attention, is its operating temperature, which greatly affects its service life. In Crystal Disk Info, the temperature is shown in an area of ​​the program called “Temperature”. The normal operating temperature of an SSD disk is 30 degrees Celsius. Values ​​of 40 degrees and above are overheating. Overheating negatively affects the service life of the SSD, and if the disk temperature is higher than normal, then it is necessary to find out the reasons for this overheating and eliminate them.
The Crystal Disk Info disk testing program provides the user with the opportunity to view any of the available SSD disk indicators in the form of a graph. To display graphs of SSD indicators, you must select Service-Graph in the menu and select the parameter of interest in the new window that opens. Rating 5.00 Vote - support the service!

Good afternoon.

The speed of the disk determines the speed of the entire computer as a whole! Moreover, surprisingly, many users underestimate this point... But the loading speed of the Windows OS, the speed of copying files to/from a disk, the speed of launching (loading) programs, etc. - it all depends on the speed of the disk.

Nowadays there are two types of disks in PCs (laptops): HDD (hard disk drive - traditional hard drives) and SSD (solid-state drive - a newfangled solid-state drive). Sometimes their speed differs significantly (for example, Windows 8 on my computer with an SSD starts in 7-8 seconds, versus 40 seconds with an HDD - the difference is colossal!).

And now about what utilities and how you can check the speed of the disk.

One of the best utilities for checking and testing disk speed (the utility supports both HDD and SSD drives). Works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits). It supports the Russian language (although the utility is quite simple and easy to understand even without knowledge of English).

Rice. 1. CrystalDiskMark main window

To test your disk in CrystalDiskMark you need to:

• select the number of write and read cycles (in Fig. 2 this number is 5, the optimal option);
• 1 GiB - file size for testing (optimal option);
• “C:\” - drive letter for testing;
• To start the test, simply click the “All” button. By the way, in most cases they always focus on the line “SeqQ32T1” - i.e. sequential writing/reading - therefore, you can simply select a test specifically for this option (you need to press the button of the same name).

The first speed (Read column, from English “read”) is the speed of reading information from the disk, the second column is writing to the disk. By the way, in Fig. 2 we tested an SSD drive (Silicon Power Slim S70): the read speed is 242.5 Mb/s - not the best indicator. For modern SSDs, the optimal speed is considered to be at least ~400 Mb/s, provided the connection is via SATA3* (although 250 Mb/s is more than the speed of a regular HDD and the increase in speed is visible to the naked eye).

* How to determine the operating mode of a SATA hard drive?

From the link above, in addition to CrystalDiskMark, you can also download another utility - CrystalDiskInfo. This utility will show you the SMART of the disk, its temperature, and other parameters (in general, an excellent utility for obtaining information about the device).

After starting it, pay attention to the line “Transfer mode” (see Fig. 3). If this line displays SATA/600 (up to 600 MB/s), then the drive is operating in SATA 3 mode (if the line displays SATA/300, i.e., the maximum throughput of 300 MB/s is SATA 2) .

AS SSD Benchmark

Author's website: http://www.alex-is.de/ (download link at the very bottom of the page)

Another very interesting utility. Allows you to easily and quickly test the hard drive of your computer (laptop): quickly find out the read and write speed. No installation required, use as standard (as with the previous utility).

Hello dear readers, I once wrote an article about, I am continuing this topic, only this time the topic will be about new SSD drives. Namely, I will show free program which will be possible download for free and read the instructions for it.

Program for ssd drives

The program is very easy to use, you just need to know what to press.

Download the program for free SSD Mini Tweaker :

The archive contains two versions of the program for 32 and 64 bit systems. To see what system you have, select computer properties.

We launch it and see this window:

After checking the boxes, click Apply changes.

Now more about checkmarks in a program for managing SSD hard drives.

• Enable Trim— it’s better to leave it, since this function is responsible for clearing unused blocks. If you disable this option, a mountain of garbage may accumulate, which will affect .
• Disable Superfetch- a function for caching frequently used files. Since the response is small in SSDs, the option can be disabled.
• Disable Prefetcher— an option to speed up the launch of the operating system and programs. Because SSD drives have excellent speed, then the option can be disabled, freeing up system memory.
• Leave the system kernel inmemory— usually the system kernel is dumped into the swap file. In order for the kernel to remain, you need to check the box. This can reduce the number of disk accesses and speed up the system. But a minimum of 2 GB of RAM is required!
• Increase file system cache size — 2 GB of RAM is also required. Reduces physical memory space for services and applications, but improves performance by reducing data writes to disk, hence it is good for the file subsystem.
  
• Remove the limit from NTFS in terms of memory use - Again, a sufficient amount of RAM is necessary. The number of updated data in memory for writing and reading files increases. After this feature, running multiple applications at the same time should improve.

Disable defragmentation of system files at boot— boot defragmentation is a useful thing, but not with an SSD. If defragmentation is enabled at startup, the SSD drive can even be damaged!

Disable Windows indexing system- the service is disconnected Windows Search, which is used to index folders and files on a disk. In SSD Windows Search is unlikely to improve performance, so disable it.

You can also speed up performance by manually disabling file content indexing.

Disable hibernation mode- turning off the mode hibernation can free up memory on the SSD disk if it is small. In Kratsi hibernation is needed to dump data to a file hiberfil.sys, and when turned on, restore the information back to memory. Read more about this in the article

Disable protection feature systems- You can also disable system recovery, which frees up RAM and hard drive. But the system restore function will not be available. If you don't use it, turn it off. I always have it disabled, I don't like it.

Disable defragmentation service— they say that defragmentation is not necessary for an SSD drive. But I advised you to disable it and do defragmentation according to my article, called defragmentation by 5 points.

• Disable paging file cleanup — for SSD disks, it is recommended to disable clearing the paging file when the system is turned off. Due to unnecessary disk access. Turn it off.

That's all, now you have program for optimizing SSD drives=)

The topic of SSD drives is gaining popularity every year, which is due to the reasonable price of these devices and the speed of their operation. However, users are often interested in the same questions: “How long can an SSD hard drive last?”, “How to assess the condition of an SSD?”.

How to find out how long an SSD drive will last?

On the Internet you can find dozens of programs that are designed to work with SSD drives. Among them, the following are especially popular: EaseUS Partition Master, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition and SSD-LIFE. The first two are ideal for testing the disk, and with SSD-LIFE you can find out the age of the device and its condition. The utility does not need to be installed. Just download and run the file. The software has a Russian-language interface and works free of charge, although there is also a paid version. Let's consider testing an SSD drive using the SSD-LIFE program as an example.

After starting the program, click on the “SMART” button and wait until the disk is scanned for errors and damage.

Under the health line, the operating time of the disk and its estimated failure date will be indicated. Above you can see the overall rating of the disc.

You can also find out how long the SSD will last using the Hard Disk Sentinel program. It differs from the previous one in a more detailed interface. There are tabs for disk operating time, number of starts, temperature, errors, warnings.

You can also use other programs to test SSDs.

Since an SSD disk has a certain number of data recording cycles, many users believe that once they are exhausted, the disk will become unusable. This is actually a myth. To dispel it, we will carry out precise calculations.

Let's say you have a 120 GB disk. The number of write cycles for this volume is 3000 (according to the manufacturer). Every day you use an example of 20 GB of data, write it down and erase it. In this mode, the disk can operate for 49 years (in theory) or 18 thousand days. However, if we assume the presence of 5-10 flaws and the load on the controller, then such a disk can only work for 8 years without problems. Where does this figure come from? We convert the disk volume into terabytes and divide by the number of megabytes used daily and for another 365 days. For example, 64,000 (120 GB): 20: 365 = 8.7 years.

Thus, the disk will function normally for the calculated years. However, once the number of provided write cycles is exhausted, the disk's performance will deteriorate. It won't fail.

Tip: if you use an SSD drive as a system drive, you do not need to transfer the page file or browser cache to other drives. An SSD drive is needed to speed up the system, and scattering files around only slows it down. But if you download movies in gigabytes, it is better to choose an HDD drive for this purpose. Otherwise, the quality life of the SDD disk will be reduced by several years.