How to Check SSD Health in Windows 11

Starting with Windows 11, you can check the health of an SSD , the solid-state drive used for data storage, directly from the Settings app. Previously, you had to rely on third-party software.

The new feature introduced with the latest version of Windows is valid for the most recent SSDs , that is, those that adopt NVMe technology (acronym for Non-Volatile Memory Express). It is not available for SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) disks and for traditional Hard Disks (HDD): however, for the latter it is possible to use the Performance Monitor system app, keeping in mind that the information will not be particularly rich.

That said, we will now show you how to check the health of an SSD drive using a Windows PC .

Note : For our guide, we used a Microsoft Surface Laptop 4, running Windows 11, and a 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD from SK Hynix. Some entries may differ depending on your computer and SSD.

How to Check the Health of an NVMe SSD on a Windows 11 PC

To check the health status of an NVMe SSD drive on Windows 11, open the Settings app and go to the “Disks and Volumes” section of the “Storage” tab via the “System” menu item . Here, several pieces of information are available under the “Drive Health” heading , including estimated remaining life, available reserve, and temperature.

Here are the detailed steps you can follow to get a complete overview of the health of the SSD drive mounted on your computer :

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Select “System” from the left side menu item.
3. Click on the “Storage” tab .
4. Under “Storage Management” select the “Advanced Storage Settings” tab .
5. From the drop-down menu that appears under “Advanced storage settings” select the “Disks and volumes” tab .
6. In the next screen locate the SSD disk and click on the “Properties” button .
7. Under the “Drive Health” heading , you will find the most important items regarding the health of your SSD, such as “estimated life remaining” , “available reserve” and “temperature” .

How to read the information in the Drive Health section

Once you have located the Drive Health section, which provides information about the health status of your SSD, it is equally important to know how to read the information provided.

Below is an explanation for each attribute:

• Estimated Life Remaining– This refers to the approximate percentage used, based on the manufacturer’s estimate of the drive’s life expectancy. The percentage can range from 0 to 100%, although in some cases the value may be even lower than 0%. In fact, a value corresponding to 0% does not automatically imply a failure of the disk, which may continue to function even at a lower percentage.
• Available Reserve– Returns a percentage from 0% to 100% of the so-called “reserve capacity,” which is the amount of storage space the manufacturer provides in the event of a failure. The exact figure is usually not disclosed by manufacturers, but it is estimated to be 10% of the storage space. For example, if you have a 256 GB drive, the extra capacity could be around 25 GB.
• Temperature– Refers to the temperature of the entire device.

For more information, you can refer to this Microsoft support page in English .

What to do in case of critical alerts

If your SSD is not in good health, one or more critical warnings will appear under the Drive Health heading . These are the most common notifications:

• Reserve capacity is low– This indicates that you are running out of extra storage space provided by the manufacturer for each SSD drive.
• reliability is degraded– The warning appears when the SSD performance has significantly decreased compared to the beginning, due to internal or media errors.

If you receive a warning like this, we recommend that you immediately create a backup of your data on another drive , in order to safeguard your most important files in the event of a disk failure.

How to Check the Health of a Traditional SSD Drive on a Windows 11 PC

The above, as explained, applies to owners of a computer with a new-generation SSD (NVMe) on board. To check the health of a traditional SSD or HDD mounted on a PC with Windows 11 on board, you need to rely on the Performance Monitor feature .

Here are the steps to complete:

1. Type “performance monitor” in the search bar located in the taskbar and click on the system app of the same name to launch it.
2. Expand the “Data Collector Set” menu , do the same with the “System” submenu , then right-click on the “System Diagnostics” entry and select “Start” .
3. Wait a few seconds for the system to complete the diagnostic request. Once the process is complete, expand the new “Reports” menu , then click on “System” and “System Diagnostics” and then select the specific report.
4. Under the “Basic System Checks” heading , click on “Disk Checks” : if the number 0 appears under “Failed” and the word “Passed” appears under “Description” , this means that the disk is still in good health.

And that’s it, our guide on how to check the health of a disk with Windows ends here. As we saw in the in-depth article above, PCs with Windows 11 on board allow you to check the health of both new NVMe SSDs and older disks (traditional SSDs and HDDs) through the Drive Health and Performance Monitor features respectively.