Software tower · floor

How to check hard drive health, minus one dead command

There are two answers to how to check hard drive health, one per platform — and the Windows one that circulates most widely is a command Microsoft has already deprecated and says it is removing.

“The WMIC utility is deprecated in Windows 10, version 21H1 and the 21H1 General Availability Channel release of Windows Server. This utility is superseded by Windows PowerShell for WMI.”
“The WMIC utility is deprecated and will be removed in an upcoming Windows release.”

Microsoft publishes both sentences in its list of deprecated Windows features, and adds a January 2024 update saying that where WMIC survives as a Feature on Demand, in the next release “the WMIC FoD will be disabled by default”. One qualification belongs with them, because it is easy to overstate this: the deprecation “applies to only the command-line management utility. WMI itself isn’t affected.” The plumbing stays; the command you were told to type into it is what is going away.

So the first practical instruction on this page is subtractive. If a guide tells you to open Command Prompt and run a wmic line, it is quoting an instruction Microsoft retired in 2021 — it may still work on the machine in front of you, and Microsoft has said in writing that this will not last.

What Microsoft points at instead

PowerShell, and a cmdlet whose whole job is the question you are asking.

Get-PhysicalDisk

The HealthStatus column is the answer. Microsoft documents exactly four values it can take:

That cmdlet is worth a moment because it answers a slightly narrower question than its name suggests, and the narrowing is in your favour. Microsoft’s own example output shows two columns side by side: OperationalStatus, which was OK, and HealthStatus, which was Healthy. A drive can be operating and still be reporting a problem. The second column is the one this page is about.

The value to take seriously is not only Unhealthy. Warning is the interesting one — the drive is doing its job and telling you something at the same time — and Unknown is worth chasing rather than shrugging at, because a health question that came back with no answer has not been answered.

On a Mac: First Aid, and what Apple says it is

Read the description before the instructions — it is narrower than the name suggests.

The Mac side needs that framing because the tool’s name oversells it. First Aid is a filesystem check, not a hardware verdict. Apple describes it in terms of formatting and directory structure, lists the symptoms it addresses, and states plainly that it cannot detect every problem a disk may have. Running it and getting a clean result tells you the filing system is intact — which is genuinely worth knowing, and is not the same as the drive being well.

The sequencing instruction is the part most often skipped, and skipping it produces a check that looks complete and is not. Volumes first, then containers, then the device itself, each in turn. And if the disk you want to check is the one macOS is currently running from, that has to happen from macOS Recovery rather than from the desktop.

“If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data and replace the disk — you can’t repair it.”

Apple puts that near the top of the page, before the steps, and it is the most useful sentence on either platform. A health check has two possible outcomes and only one of them is a repair job. The other outcome is a shopping decision with a deadline attached, and the tool is telling you so rather than offering to try harder.

One thing this page deliberately does not do is send you to a third-party utility. Several exist, some are free, and the ones people name most often may well be good — but naming one here would mean recommending software this site has not run against a failing drive, which is the only test that would tell you anything.

The other thing it will not do is turn a status into a timetable. Neither Microsoft nor Apple publishes a figure for how long a drive lasts after its first Warning, and any number offered in place of that is somebody’s guess wearing a decimal point.

What both vendors do agree on is the response, and it is the same response on both platforms: a bad answer to this question is a backup instruction, not a repair instruction. The floors below start there.

Where to start

Three ways in. If the answer already came back bad, take the third.

“Which command, on Windows?”
PowerShell, not the old one — the windows answer
“What does First Aid actually check?”
Narrower than the name — the mac answer
“It says the drive is failing.”
Back up, then replace — when the answer is bad

The Windows answer

A deprecated command everybody still quotes, a supported cmdlet that replaces it, and four documented values one of which is worth more attention than it gets.

Speeding up a MacBookApple publishes five causes, and not one of them is a cache to clear.Open this floor → Factory resetting a MacBookIt erases settings, data and apps — and leaves the operating system exactly where it was.Open this floor → Why a computer is slowThe causes in the order they actually occur, and the one people fix last.Open this floor → Factory resetting Windows 11Two options that sound alike and remove very different amounts.Open this floor → Windows 10 end of lifeThe published date, what stops on it, and what does not.Open this floor →

The Mac answer

First Aid checks formatting and directory structure. Apple says so, and says in the same breath that it cannot see everything.

Backing up a MacBookApple lists four ways and puts them in an order — and only one recovers a deleted file.Open this floor → Force quitting on a MacThree routes, and the one that works when the screen has stopped responding.Open this floor → Clearing a cache on a MacTwo separate commands — and one of them also forgets which sites asked for your location.Open this floor →

When the answer is bad

Both vendors give the same instruction, and it is not a repair. Copy what is on the drive while it is still readable, then replace it.

Backing up your computerWhat to copy, where to, and how to find out whether it worked before you need it.Open this floor → Recovering deleted filesWhere a deleted file actually goes, and how long the window stays open.Open this floor → Backing up an iPhoneThe same job on the phone, where the choice between iCloud and a computer changes what you get.Open this floor →

What this tower will not do

It will not recommend a third-party disk utility. That would mean vouching for software this site has never watched handle a drive that was actually failing, and nothing else counts as a test.

It will not tell you how long a drive has left after a warning. No published figure exists from either vendor, and inventing one would be the least defensible thing on this page.

And it will not repeat the wmic instruction just because it still works today. Microsoft has written down that it is deprecated and will be removed, and passing it on without that is how an answer stays wrong for years. What holds instead is simple: the deprecation of the WMIC utility in Windows 10 version 21H1, its supersession by Windows PowerShell for WMI, the statement that it will be removed in an upcoming release and that the Feature on Demand will be disabled by default, the note that WMI itself is unaffected, the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet with its four documented HealthStatus values and its example output, and Apple’s description of what First Aid checks, the order to run it in, the statement that it cannot detect or repair every problem, and the instruction to back up and replace a disk that is about to fail are quoted from the vendor documentation listed below.

Where this page got its facts

  1. Microsoft, Deprecated features in the Windows client — Microsoft Learn (that the WMIC utility is deprecated in Windows 10 version 21H1 and the 21H1 General Availability Channel release of Windows Server; that it is superseded by Windows PowerShell for WMI; that it will be removed in an upcoming Windows release; the January 2024 update stating that the WMIC Feature on Demand will be disabled by default in the next release of Windows; and the note that the deprecation applies only to the command-line management utility and that WMI itself is not affected) — learn.microsoft.com, read 22 August 2026.
  2. Microsoft, Get-PhysicalDisk (Storage) — Microsoft Learn (that the cmdlet gets a list of PhysicalDisk objects; the four accepted HealthStatus values Healthy, Warning, Unhealthy and Unknown; and the example output showing OperationalStatus and HealthStatus as separate columns) — learn.microsoft.com, read 22 August 2026.
  3. Apple, Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac — Disk Utility User Guide (that Disk Utility can check for and fix errors related to the formatting and directory structure of a storage device; the listed symptoms of multiple apps quitting unexpectedly, a corrupted file, an external device not working properly, or the computer not starting up; the statement that Disk Utility cannot detect or repair all problems that a disk may have; the instruction to run First Aid on each volume and container in turn and then on the storage device itself; the instruction to restart in macOS Recovery when checking the startup disk; and the instruction that if Disk Utility says the disk is about to fail the data should be backed up and the disk replaced because it cannot be repaired) — support.apple.com, read 22 August 2026.

Written by Alberto Gulotta

Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.

Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.

Written on 22 August 2026.

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