How to Check SSD Health on Windows, Mac, and Linux

Knowing how to check SSD health helps you identify excessive flash wear, rising error counts, overheating, low spare capacity, and other warning signs before they lead to serious data loss. The most reliable method is to examine the drive’s SMART or NVMe health information using your operating system, the SSD manufacturer’s utility, or a dedicated monitoring tool.

A health check does not guarantee that an SSD will continue working. Drives can fail without a long warning period, while heavily used drives may continue operating after reaching their rated endurance. The goal is to combine several indicators—remaining life, critical warnings, media errors, temperature, spare capacity, and recent behaviour—to make a sensible decision about backups and replacement.

This article explains how to check an SSD on Windows, macOS, and Linux, how to interpret the results, which warnings require immediate action, and why some commonly recommended tests do not measure physical SSD health.

What Does SSD Health Mean?

SSD health describes the condition of the drive’s NAND flash memory, controller, spare blocks, firmware, and error-management systems. It is usually reported through Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, commonly called SMART.

Unlike a mechanical hard drive, an SSD does not contain moving platters or read/write heads. It stores information in NAND flash cells, and those cells can tolerate a limited number of program-and-erase cycles. The SSD controller distributes writes across the available memory through wear levelling and replaces unreliable cells with reserved spare capacity.

An SSD health tool may therefore report several different measurements:

• Estimated remaining life or percentage used
• Available spare capacity
• Temperature
• Data written
• Power-on hours
• Media and data-integrity errors
• Unsafe shutdowns
• Error-log entries
• Reallocated or retired NAND blocks
• A general SMART or critical-warning status

These measurements do not all carry equal weight. A drive with 80% remaining life and rapidly increasing media errors may be more concerning than one with 20% remaining life and no errors.

Quick Comparison of SSD Health-Check Methods

Method	Best for	Information provided	Main limitation
Windows Settings	Quick NVMe check	Remaining life, spare capacity, temperature and warnings	Windows does not provide the same built-in monitoring for SATA SSDs
Windows PowerShell	No-download status check	Health status, wear, temperature, errors and power-on hours when supported	Some fields may be blank because of the drive or controller
Manufacturer software	Detailed brand-specific diagnosis	SMART data, firmware, life remaining, diagnostics and updates	Full features may only work with supported drives
macOS Disk Utility	Basic Mac disk check	SMART or hardware-failure information on supported disks	Does not always show detailed endurance statistics
smartctl	Advanced cross-platform analysis	Full SATA and NVMe SMART information	Output can be technical and attributes vary by manufacturer
nvme-cli	Detailed Linux NVMe analysis	NVMe health log, warnings, wear, temperature and errors	Works only with NVMe devices
File-system checking tools	Diagnosing logical corruption	File-system and metadata errors	Do not measure NAND wear or remaining SSD life

How to Check SSD Health on Windows 11 and Windows 10

Windows offers several ways to check a drive. The best method depends on whether your SSD uses NVMe or SATA and how much detail you need.

Method 1: Check NVMe Health in Windows Settings

Windows 11 can display health information for supported NVMe SSDs without requiring additional software.

1. Open Settings.
2. Select System.
3. Open Storage.
4. Expand Advanced storage settings.
5. Select Disks & volumes.
6. Find the physical SSD and select Properties.

The page may display estimated remaining life, available spare capacity, temperature and critical warnings. Microsoft identifies three serious storage warnings: low spare capacity, degraded reliability, and a drive that has switched to read-only mode.

A read-only warning is especially urgent. It means the device may still allow you to open existing files but will not accept new writes. Copy important data to another storage device immediately.

The major limitation is that Windows’ built-in storage-health monitoring applies to NVMe SSDs rather than SATA SSDs or conventional hard drives. A SATA SSD may therefore appear in the Disks & volumes area without showing useful life or health measurements.

Method 2: Check SSD Status With PowerShell

PowerShell provides a quick overview of the physical drives detected by Windows.

Open Windows Terminal or PowerShell as an administrator and run:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus, Size

Possible health states include:

• Healthy
• Warning
• Unhealthy
• Unknown

These are the standard health-status values exposed by the Windows Storage module.

For more detailed reliability information, run:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Format-List *

Depending on the SSD and its storage controller, the output may contain wear, temperature, power-on hours, read errors and write errors. Microsoft describes these counters as device-reported information covering temperature, errors, wear and operating time.

Blank fields do not automatically indicate a defective SSD. Some drives, USB adapters, RAID controllers and storage drivers do not expose every reliability counter to Windows. In that situation, use the SSD manufacturer’s software or a SMART utility.

Why You Should Not Rely on the Old WMIC Command

Many older tutorials recommend this command:

wmic diskdrive get status

It normally produces a basic result such as “OK” or “Pred Fail,” but it reveals very little about endurance, spare blocks, temperature or errors. More significantly, Microsoft has deprecated the WMIC command-line utility, so it may be missing or disabled on newer Windows installations.

PowerShell and current storage-management tools are better choices for a modern Windows system.

Method 3: Use the SSD Manufacturer’s Utility

The manufacturer’s own software is often the most useful option, particularly for SATA SSDs or drives whose detailed health data does not appear in Windows Settings.

Examples include:

• Samsung Magician
• Crucial Storage Executive
• Seagate SeaTools
• Brand-specific tools supplied by Kingston, Solidigm, Lexar and other manufacturers

Samsung Magician can display drive status, perform SMART checks, identify supported firmware updates and provide model-specific functions. Samsung notes that full support is intended for Samsung-branded drives, while OEM or third-party SSDs may expose fewer features. Some storage-controller and RAID configurations can also prevent detection.

Crucial Storage Executive similarly provides drive-health and diagnostic information for supported Crucial SSDs. SeaTools can diagnose hard drives and monitor SSDs, including SMART-related information on supported devices.

Download these utilities from the manufacturer’s official website rather than an unofficial software directory. Back up important files before installing SSD firmware. Samsung, for example, recommends backing up the drive before applying a firmware update even though the update is not intended to erase stored data.

Method 4: Use a Dedicated SMART Program

A dedicated SMART viewer is useful when you have SSDs from different manufacturers or want more detail than Windows provides. Such programs can show the general health status, lifetime writes, power-on hours, wear indicators, temperature and error counters in one interface.

When using a third-party utility, confirm that you downloaded it from the developer’s official source. Do not assume that a large green “Good” label tells the whole story. Review the underlying measurements, particularly percentage used, available spare, media errors and critical warnings.

How to Check SSD Health on macOS

Apple’s Disk Utility provides a basic hardware-health check for supported internal and external disks.

1. Open Applications.
2. Open the Utilities folder.
3. Launch Disk Utility.
4. Choose View > Show All Devices if the physical drive is not visible.
5. Select the physical SSD rather than only its APFS volume.
6. Click the Info button in the toolbar.
7. Review the reported SMART or hardware status.

Apple states that many disks include SMART hardware and can test themselves for potential problems. If Disk Utility reports a fatal hardware error, that problem cannot be repaired by software; Apple advises copying as much data as possible and arranging service or replacement.

Disk Utility First Aid Is Not a Complete SSD Health Test

First Aid checks and repairs file-system structures, APFS containers and volume metadata. It is useful when files cannot be opened, a volume will not mount, or macOS reports directory errors.

It does not restore worn NAND flash or reset the drive’s lifetime-write counter. A successful First Aid result means the file system is structurally consistent; it does not prove that the SSD has full remaining endurance.

Users who need detailed SMART statistics may use smartmontools through the command line. Results depend on the Mac model, the storage device and whether an external enclosure passes SMART commands through to the SSD.

How to Check SSD Health on Linux

Linux users can inspect detailed SATA and NVMe health data with smartmontools.

On Ubuntu or Debian-based systems, install it with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install smartmontools

On Fedora-based systems, use:

sudo dnf install smartmontools

Scan for supported drives:

sudo smartctl --scan-open

For a SATA SSD, the command will often resemble:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

For an NVMe SSD, use the detected NVMe device name:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1

The -a option prints the available SMART information, including identification details, health status, attributes, error logs and self-test information supported by the device. Smartctl recognises device names such as /dev/nvme0 and /dev/nvme0n1 for NVMe hardware.

Checking an NVMe SSD With nvme-cli

Linux users can also install nvme-cli and run:

sudo nvme list
sudo nvme smart-log /dev/nvme0n1 -H

The NVMe SMART log can report:

• Critical-warning flags
• Composite temperature
• Available spare capacity
• Percentage used
• Data read and written
• Power cycles
• Power-on hours
• Unsafe shutdowns
• Media and data-integrity errors
• Error-log entries

NVM Express describes nvme smart-log as a health-monitoring command that reports critical warnings, temperature, endurance, operating hours and error summaries. A non-zero critical-warning field indicates that at least one warning condition has been triggered.

How to Read SSD SMART Health Results

The wording varies among tools, but the underlying measurements usually fall into several major categories.

Overall Health or Critical Warning

An “OK,” “Healthy” or zero critical-warning result means that the drive has not crossed its programmed failure thresholds. It does not mean that failure is impossible.

For NVMe drives, the critical-warning field can indicate low spare capacity, an out-of-range temperature, degraded reliability, read-only operation or a problem with volatile-memory backup.

Any active critical warning should be treated seriously. Back up the data before spending time on benchmarks, firmware updates or extended diagnostic tests.

Percentage Used and Remaining Life

NVMe drives commonly report Percentage Used, which estimates how much of the SSD’s rated endurance has been consumed. A value of 20% generally suggests that approximately one-fifth of the manufacturer’s predicted endurance has been used.

Some software converts this to Remaining Life:

Remaining life ≈ 100 − Percentage Used

This is an endurance estimate, not a probability of surviving the next year. It is also manufacturer-specific.

A lesser-known detail is that an NVMe Percentage Used value of 100 does not automatically mean the SSD has failed. The NVMe definition allows the value to exceed 100 because the drive may continue operating after consuming its predicted endurance. Values above 254 are represented as 255.

Reaching 100% should still trigger replacement planning. The drive has moved beyond the endurance level for which its usable life was estimated, even if it remains functional.

Available Spare Capacity

SSDs contain spare NAND that the controller can use when flash blocks become unreliable. The available-spare reading is normally shown as a percentage from 0 to 100.

Do not compare it directly with remaining life. A drive can show 100% available spare while having consumed part of its rated endurance. A warning is triggered when available spare falls below the manufacturer-defined threshold.

Low spare capacity is a strong reason to replace the SSD because it suggests that the controller’s reserve for handling failing blocks is being depleted.

Media and Data-Integrity Errors

For NVMe drives, this counter records unrecovered integrity failures detected by the controller, such as uncorrectable error-correction-code failures, checksum errors or logical-block tag mismatches.

A non-zero value deserves investigation, but the trend is often more informative than one isolated number. Record the current result, reboot normally and check it again after regular use. A value that continues increasing is more concerning than a historical count that remains unchanged.

Back up immediately when media errors appear alongside freezes, unreadable files, read-only operation or a reliability warning.

Error Information Log Entries

This value shows how many entries have been added to the NVMe error log over the controller’s lifetime. It is not identical to the media-error count.

Some error-log entries can be associated with command, driver, reset or interface events rather than failed NAND. Look at the error details and whether the count continues rising instead of declaring the SSD defective from this number alone.

Unsafe Shutdowns

An unsafe shutdown is normally recorded when the SSD loses power without receiving a proper shutdown notification. Power cuts, forced restarts, battery disconnections and crashes can raise this counter.

A high historical count is not proof of NAND failure. A rapidly increasing count on a system that appears to shut down normally may point to power delivery, firmware or system-stability problems.

Temperature

SSD temperature should be interpreted against the limits specified for the exact model. NVMe drives can become warm during sustained file transfers, game loading, video editing and other intensive operations.

Occasional temperature increases are not the same as sustained operation at or above the device’s warning threshold. Review the current temperature together with warning-temperature time, critical-temperature time and any thermal-throttling behaviour.

If the drive regularly overheats, improve airflow, check whether an M.2 heatsink is correctly installed, remove dust from the system and confirm that thermal pads make proper contact.

Total Host Writes and TBW

Host writes show how much data the computer has sent to the SSD. NVMe records Data Units Written in groups of 1,000 units of 512 bytes, and monitoring software often converts the result into gigabytes or terabytes.

You can compare the total written data with the manufacturer’s Terabytes Written rating, or TBW. However, TBW is a warranty-endurance specification rather than a precise shutdown point. An SSD does not automatically fail when the counter reaches the advertised rating.

What SSD Health Results Require Immediate Action?

Back up the drive immediately when you see any of the following:

• A critical warning or failed SMART status
• Reliability degraded
• Drive switched to read-only mode
• Available spare below its threshold
• Media and data-integrity errors that are increasing
• An unsuccessful self-test
• Unreadable files combined with SMART warnings
• Repeated disappearance from the BIOS or operating system
• Firmware or manufacturer software explicitly recommending replacement

Avoid repeatedly rebooting, benchmarking or running write-heavy tests on a drive that is already showing severe warnings. Your first objective is to recover irreplaceable files.

After securing the data, verify the physical connection, cable, power supply, storage driver and enclosure. A faulty SATA cable or USB bridge can produce communication errors even when the SSD itself remains usable.

Important SSD Health Details Many Guides Miss

A Healthy Status Is Not a Backup Strategy

SMART is a monitoring system, not a guarantee. It only reports conditions the controller can detect and has been programmed to expose. Sudden controller, firmware or electrical failures may occur before a tool displays a clear warning.

Keep important information on at least one other device or storage service. Business data and irreplaceable personal files should have multiple independent copies.

External Enclosures May Hide SMART Data

An SSD can be perfectly detectable as a storage volume while its SMART information remains unavailable. Some USB-to-SATA, USB-to-NVMe and RAID bridges do not pass the required health commands to the operating system.

Smartmontools supports a range of bridge-specific access methods, but compatibility varies by controller. Incorrectly forcing an unsupported bridge mode can cause I/O errors or disconnect the device.

When an external SSD shows “SMART unavailable,” try the manufacturer’s utility, another compatible enclosure, or a direct motherboard connection where practical.

SATA SMART Attributes Are Not Fully Standardised

NVMe health fields are comparatively consistent, but many ATA and SATA SMART attributes are vendor-specific. Manufacturers may use different formulas, raw-value layouts and attribute names.

Smartmontools explains that each vendor can use its own algorithm to convert raw data into normalised values. SSD attributes can also be labelled incorrectly when a drive is not recognised in the smartmontools database.

For that reason, do not compare raw wear-level values from two unrelated SSD brands as though they use the same scale.

A Benchmark Is Not an SSD Health Test

A speed test measures performance under a particular workload. Low performance can be caused by a full drive, thermal throttling, background activity, a slow interface, power-saving settings, cache exhaustion or encryption.

A failing SSD may still produce a normal benchmark result, while a healthy SSD may benchmark below its advertised maximum. Use benchmarks to investigate performance, not to determine remaining NAND life.

CHKDSK Does Not Measure Flash Wear

Windows CHKDSK examines the file system, disk-space use and volume metadata. With the correct parameters, it can repair logical file-system errors or attempt to recover readable information from problematic areas.

It does not calculate remaining SSD life or restore exhausted flash cells. A drive can pass CHKDSK while reporting a critical SMART warning, and it can fail CHKDSK because of file-system corruption even when its NAND remains healthy.

Track Changes Instead of Reading One Snapshot

A single SMART report can miss the most useful context. Save or photograph the important readings and compare them later.

Pay particular attention to:

• New critical warnings
• Falling spare capacity
• Rising media-error counts
• Rapid wear-percentage increases
• More time above the warning temperature
• Sudden increases in unsafe shutdowns
• Changes in read or write error totals

Trends help distinguish historical events from active deterioration.

How Often Should You Check SSD Health?

For a normal home computer, checking every two or three months is a reasonable maintenance schedule. Also check after unexplained freezes, unexpected shutdowns, file corruption, overheating or a sudden change in storage performance.

A heavily used workstation, server, video-editing system or business computer may benefit from continuous monitoring or monthly reports. Health checks should be more frequent when the SSD is approaching its rated endurance or already showing non-zero error counters.

Do not run repeated full-drive write benchmarks merely to monitor health. They add unnecessary writes and provide less useful reliability information than SMART trends.

How to Help an SSD Remain Reliable

You cannot reverse normal NAND wear, but you can avoid conditions that create unnecessary stress.

Keep reliable backups, maintain adequate airflow and avoid repeatedly filling the SSD to its absolute capacity. Leave enough free space for normal operating-system activity and the controller’s internal management processes.

On Windows, you can verify whether delete notifications, commonly called TRIM, are enabled with:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

For NTFS, Microsoft states that TRIM is enabled by default unless an administrator disables it. Delete notifications tell the storage device which clusters have been freed after files are deleted.

Use the operating system’s normal SSD optimisation function rather than applying old mechanical-drive maintenance advice. Keep the system stable, use reliable power, and install firmware updates when they address a relevant issue for your model. Back up before updating firmware.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the easiest way to check SSD health?

On Windows 11, open Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes, select the SSD and view its properties. This works best with supported NVMe drives. For SATA SSDs, use the manufacturer’s official utility or a SMART program. On macOS, use Disk Utility. On Linux, run smartctl -a for the detected device.

Is 90% SSD health good?

A reading of 90% remaining life usually means the SSD has consumed about 10% of its estimated endurance, which is generally not concerning by itself. Confirm whether the program displays life remaining or percentage used, since the scales are opposite. Also check critical warnings, spare capacity and media errors rather than relying only on the percentage.

Is 70% SSD health bad?

Seventy percent remaining life does not normally indicate immediate failure. It suggests that approximately 30% of the drive’s estimated endurance has been consumed. The result becomes more concerning when accompanied by degraded reliability, low spare capacity, media errors, read-only operation or rapidly falling health over a short period.

Can SSD health be repaired?

Normal flash wear cannot be reversed. File-system errors may be repaired with tools such as CHKDSK or Disk Utility First Aid, and firmware updates may resolve specific compatibility or stability problems. They do not regenerate worn NAND cells. A drive reporting fatal hardware errors, depleted spare capacity or repeated integrity failures should be backed up and replaced.

Does formatting an SSD restore its health?

No. Formatting removes or recreates file-system structures but does not reset physical NAND wear, power-on hours, lifetime writes or SMART error counters. Secure erase may return performance to a cleaner state in certain situations, but it does not make worn flash memory new again and permanently destroys stored data.

Can an SSD fail while SMART says it is healthy?

Yes. SMART can identify many developing problems, but not every failure mode produces advance warning. Controller defects, firmware crashes, electrical damage and sudden component failure may occur while the last recorded status was healthy. Current backups remain necessary even when all health indicators look normal.

Why is my SSD health information unavailable?

The operating system may not support detailed monitoring for that interface, or a USB enclosure, RAID controller or storage driver may be blocking SMART commands. Windows’ Settings-based health page is mainly intended for NVMe SSDs. Try the manufacturer’s utility, smartmontools, a different enclosure, or a direct connection when appropriate.

Should I replace an SSD at 100% percentage used?

Plan to replace it. In the NVMe specification, 100% percentage used means the manufacturer’s estimated endurance has been consumed, but it does not necessarily mean immediate failure. The value can even rise above 100. Continued operation may be possible, but the drive is beyond its predicted endurance and should not be trusted as the only copy of important data.

Final Takeaway

The most dependable way to learn how to check SSD health is to read the drive’s SMART or NVMe health data and examine more than a single percentage. Start with Windows Settings, PowerShell, macOS Disk Utility, smartctl, nvme-cli or the manufacturer’s official software, depending on your operating system and SSD type.

Focus on critical warnings, remaining endurance, spare capacity, media errors, temperature and changes over time. A healthy status is reassuring but cannot guarantee future operation. When a drive reports degraded reliability, read-only mode, low spare capacity or growing integrity errors, back up the data first and arrange a replacement rather than trying to repair physical flash wear.