How to Tell If a Hard Drive Is Corrupted (with Pictures)

Updated by

Tracy King 

Updated on April 22, 2024

Key Takeaways: How to Determine If a Hard Drive Is Corrupted:

• When a hard drive becomes corrupted, you can typically diagnose the issue based on its symptoms.
• You can also seek assistance from a reliable hard drive health checking software.

On this page, we will guide you through the comprehensive process of detecting a corrupted hard drive from various aspects:

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If your hard disk drives are acting up and you're unsure whether the disk itself is corrupt, failing, or experiencing other issues, proceed and follow the tips below. You'll learn precisely what's happening on your drive.

The methods outlined here can also help you determine if an SSD, USB flash drive, external HDD/SSD, or even an SD card is corrupted.

#1. Check for Hard Drive Corruption Symptoms

• Price: $0
• Complexity Level: ⭐⭐
• Tools: hard drive, computer, connection cable, visual inspection.

When you observe 2 or 3 of the symptoms listed here on your hard drive, it's highly likely that your hard drive is corrupted:

• Hard drive frequently crashes or freezes: If a computer often crashes or freezes, it could indicate hard drive corruption.
• Hard drive suddenly slows down or becomes extremely slow despite having significant free space: When a hard drive abruptly slows down or becomes excessively slow in writing new data or transferring files, it might be corrupted.
• Hard drive displays an error message: If you receive an error message referring to your hard drive, such as "the disk structure is corrupted and unreadable," your drive is undoubtedly corrupted.
• Hard drive becomes inaccessible or unopenable: You are unable to access or open the content saved on the hard drive, and the computer may warn you that the disk is inaccessible with access denied.

#2. Check If the Hard Drive File System Is Corrupted

• Price: $0
• Complexity Level: ⭐⭐⭐
• Tools: hard drive, computer, connection cable, Disk Management utility.

Another direct method to determine if a hard drive is corrupted is by examining its file system or testing for corruption. Here's how you can check if your hard drive's file system is corrupted using Disk Management on your computer:

• Right-click the Windows icon in the taskbar and select "Disk Management."
• Find the hard drive that you suspect is corrupted and check its partition status in the file system section.
• If the file system format displays as "RAW," your disk is indeed corrupted.

您可能还想知道当硬盘变为原始格式时该怎么办，对吧？以下是一些提示，您可以尝试修复RAW和损坏的硬盘：

#3. Check for Hard Drive Corruption with Diagnostic Software

• Price: $0
• Complexity Level: ⭐
• Tools: hard drive, computer, connection cable, hard drive health diagnostic software -工具 Partition Master

The last and most efficient technical method you can employ is to use reliable disk health check software, such as the tools Partition Master, for assistance. Its Disk Health, Check File System, and Test Disk Surface features can help you thoroughly examine and diagnose whether a hard drive is corrupted.

Here's how you can check if a hard drive is corrupted using the DiskHealth feature from the Partition Master tool:

Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, go to the "Discovery" section, and click on "Disk Health".

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• Select the target hard drive you want to check for corruption, and let the software scan the disk.
• If the Status section displays as "Bad", it indicates that your disk is indeed corrupted.
• If the Status shows as "Unknown", it suggests that there is a high likelihood of your disk being corrupted.

Aside from checking the hard drive status, you can also utilize the Check File System and Disk Surface Test features in this software to ascertain if your hard drive is damaged.

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Check Disk in Windows 11 and Windows 10

This page demonstrates how to inspect file system errors on the hard disk and resolve issues leading to hard drive corruption with just a few simple clicks.

What to Do When a Hard Drive Becomes Corrupted? 100% Effective Solutions

那么，损坏的硬盘可以修复吗？是的，当然可以！然后该怎么办呢？

Here are some practical tips that we've tested, ensuring that you can 100% repair and fix a corrupted hard drive due to logical errors as listed below:

• ✔️ Recover Data from Corrupted Hard Drive
• ✔️ Run CHKDSK /F /R /X Command to Fix Hard Drive Error
• ✔️ Format RAW Hard Drive to NTFS
• ✔️ Scan and eliminate viruses, malware
• ✔️ Replace the faulty drive immediately if the above suggestions have been tried but the disk continues to corruption.

In addition to these tips, we recommend that you promptly back up important personal data to an external hard drive or even a cloud service when you experience disk corruption signs for the first or second time. If you're interested in learning more about monitoring your hard drive's health, please click on the video.

For Your Information - IMPORTANT:

A brand new hard drive boasts robust error-correcting capabilities, enabling it to perform reliably and efficiently in handling vast amounts of data during your daily operations. However, as your hard drive reaches 3-5 years or older, it becomes more susceptible to corruption, due to the accumulation of numerous errors or bad sectors on the drive.

Therefore, to protect your personal data and privacy, it's crucial to migrate your essential system disk and data storage drive to a newer and more reliable disk. For a detailed walkthrough, you can refer to this tutorial for assistance:

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How to Clone HDD to SSD in Windows 11

Follow this step-by-step guide to clone your hard drive to an SSD in Windows 11 without encountering any boot problems. Read more >>

Conclusion

On this page, we have compiled 3 major effective methods that can assist both Windows novices and professionals in efficiently detecting and confirming whether their hard drives, SSDs, or other types of storage devices are corrupted or not.

In most cases, the simplest way to determine if a disk is corrupted is to check if its file system has turned to RAW; if so, it's certain that the disk is corrupted. However, if your disk drive suddenly becomes inaccessible or cannot be opened, it could also be a sign of corruption. To further confirm this, you will need to use professional disk health-checking software like Partition Master for assistance.

This software offers a one-click disk health detection feature, allowing you to promptly determine the condition of the disk in a technically reliable manner. When you suspect your storage devices might have internal errors, give this software a try. It not only delivers efficient disk scanning services but also ensures your disk and data remain intact without causing any harm.

If you find this guide useful and informative, please share it to help more people learn how to check their disk health status and determine if their drives are corrupted or functioning properly:

Frequently Asked Questions About Determining If a Hard Drive Is Corrupted

Below, we have compiled additional questions related to disk corruption diagnosis. If you're interested, follow along to find the answers here:

< strong > 1. How can I tell if my external hard drive is corrupted?

When you're unsure if your external hard drive is corrupted, you can follow the 3 tips provided on this page for assistance. The key factors are:

1. Verify if the external hard drive can be accessed or opened.
2. Confirm whether the file system of the external disk has changed to RAW.
3. Rely on dependable disk health checking software, such as Partition Master, for assistance.

**2. What happens when a hard drive becomes corrupted?**

Here's a list of issues that can occur when a hard drive becomes corrupted:

• Access denied to the hard drive, preventing you from accessing or opening any saved files on it.
• File or data loss due to a corrupted hard drive.
• Disk becomes unbootable.
• Computer displays a warning message.
• Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error.
• System crash or boot failure issues.

3. How do I perform hard drive corruption recovery?

When your hard drive becomes corrupted, and you need an opportunity to save and recover all possible data from it, follow these steps:

Step 1. Stop using the hard drive first.

Step 2: Run reliable hard drive recovery software to scan the disk data.

Step 3: When the scanning process finishes, select all the found data and immediately restore them to an external disk or another secure location.

Step 4. After the recovery process finishes, open File Explorer, Disk Management, or a third-party hard drive format tool such as Partition Master to format the corrupted hard drive.

Step 5. Reset the hard drive file system format to NTFS and confirm the formatting.