SSDs do not fail like hard drives. There is usually no clicking or grinding, so the health information the drive reports about itself is the best early warning you get. Checking it takes a couple of minutes, and Windows 11 can do part of the job without extra software.
Forge PC has not tested these tools on a failing drive. The steps below follow Microsoft's support documentation, Crystal Dew World's official CrystalDiskInfo guidance, and the drive manufacturers' own software pages. Whatever a health tool says, the most important step is having a backup.
Before you start: back up
If you are checking because something already seems wrong, such as files that will not open, freezes or a warning message, back up first. Crystal Dew World's guidance says to copy anything you cannot afford to lose to another drive, external storage, a NAS or a trusted cloud service. It also points out that copying files to another partition on the same physical drive is not a backup. Our guide to backing up Windows 11 covers the built-in options.
Method 1: Windows 11's built-in health page (NVMe drives)
Windows 11 can show health information for NVMe SSDs without any extra software. Microsoft's support page gives this route:
Open Start > Settings > System > Storage.
Select Advanced storage settings, then Disks & volumes.
Select the drive and choose Properties.
The Properties page can show three health attributes. Microsoft describes them like this:
Attribute | What it means |
|---|
Estimated remaining life | An approximate percentage based on the manufacturer's prediction of drive life |
Available spare | A normalised percentage (0 to 100) of the spare capacity left |
Temperature | The temperature of the whole drive in degrees Celsius |
Windows also sends critical warnings in three cases: when spare capacity drops below the manufacturer's safety threshold, when reliability is degraded by significant media errors or an internal error, and when the drive has been set to read-only. Microsoft's advice for any of them is to back up your data.
The important limit is that, according to Microsoft, Windows only monitors NVMe SSDs this way, not SATA SSDs or hard drives. For a SATA drive, use one of the methods below.
Method 2: CrystalDiskInfo (any drive)
CrystalDiskInfo is a long-running free utility from Crystal Dew World that reads the S.M.A.R.T. health data your drive reports. The latest version listed on the official site is 9.9.4, released on 3 November 2026. It supports Windows 10 and 11, and Crystal Dew World says NVMe support requires Windows 10 or later. Download it only from the official crystalmark.info site.
Open it to see each detected drive's health status (Good, Caution or Bad), its temperature and the attributes it reports.
What the statuses mean, according to Crystal Dew World:
Good does not guarantee the drive will not fail, and it is not a substitute for backups.
Caution means the tool has detected a sign of deterioration. For many SSDs, it appears when estimated remaining life reaches 10 per cent or less. That figure is an estimate based on the manufacturer's write-endurance rating and cannot be converted into a number of days or months.
Bad may appear when a value reported by the drive falls below the manufacturer's threshold, which suggests it may no longer be working normally.
Crystal Dew World also notes that CrystalDiskInfo does not support every drive and can misjudge health on some products, partly because some drives have inappropriate S.M.A.R.T. values set at the factory. If you need to contact support, use Edit > Copy to copy the drive's information as text, or take a screenshot.
Most SSD brands have a free utility that reads health data for their own drives and can also install firmware updates. Samsung's Magician software, available from Samsung Semiconductor's consumer storage tools page, works with Samsung SSDs, portable SSDs, memory cards and USB drives. Samsung notes that supported features may vary with other makers' drives. Western Digital's SSD Dashboard, which WD says monitors drive health, temperature, available space and firmware version, covers WD drives such as the WD Blue SA510. Kingston lists its Kingston SSD Manager utility on its SSD product pages.
These tools can be the best way to check firmware, but only update firmware after you have a backup.
If you get a warning
Crystal Dew World's advice is to back up important data first and save the CrystalDiskInfo report. Then check whether the drive is still under warranty and plan to replace it. Do not run long benchmarks, full-drive write tests, formatting or repair tools until the backup is done, because those can put extra stress on a drive that is already struggling. It also suggests watching whether values are increasing over time, rather than reacting to a single reading.
When you replace the drive, our free SSD cloning guide explains how to move Windows across, and our best SSD list covers what to buy. If your PC is crashing rather than just showing a warning, our blue screen fix guide can help rule out other causes.
Our verdict
On Windows 11, check an NVMe SSD's health in Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes > Properties. For a SATA SSD, or for more detail on any drive, use the free CrystalDiskInfo from Crystal Dew World's official site or your drive maker's own tool. Treat "Caution" or a Windows critical warning as a prompt to back up and plan a replacement, not as a countdown. Treat "Good" as reassurance, not as a reason to skip backups. We have not tested these tools on a failing drive; this guide follows Microsoft's and Crystal Dew World's official guidance.
