My hard drive failed recently due to bad sectors. I recovered most of my projects but everything else was gone. How can I prevent this from happening again. Any best practices, tools etc.

 

HWinfo. A free tool that lets you monitor pretty much anything your computer can monitor. Including various hard drive statistics like read-errors, failures, and health, if your HDD supports it.

 

Hard Disk Sentinel
CrystalDiskInfo
HDD Regenerator
DiskGenius.Pro
Victoria

 

my favorite is Hard Disk Sentinel but they are all fairly good. For disc issues with bad sectors HDD Regenerator as a last resort to repair it, but it may not always be successful, I've had a few in the past that it couldn't fix.

 

any data you have in only one place should be considered already lost

 

I just adhere to the 3-2-1 backup plan and also use some minor utilities, although there aren't as many for macOS that I know of that people honestly recommend highly (but I'm open to suggestions...)

 

Crystal Disk Info. It saved my ass already a couple of times, because it warns about unstable sectors and gives the user enough time to migrate data. Highly recommended!

 

R-Studio is a helpful tool...

 

Looks like everything is for Windows. :/

 

What about DriveDX (for Mac)? https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx You can find it k'd.

 

Can I add to this subject to include Monitor SSD Health ?
- I don't have any SSDs yet but it seems to me that half the world thinks they manage themselves (ie. DON'T TOUCH), while the rest (including SSD hardware companies) produce SSD Maintenance tools etc.!

 

I monitor everything with Hard Disk Sentinel & Sync the projects folder with Gulag Drive

 

you want backups in the first place, not some fancy monitoring/diagnostics app.
every HDD and SSD may die anytime and there's nothing you can do about it once it happens.

 

CrystalDiskInfo --> https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

When you buy an SSD from Samsung or Crucial, you get a free monitoring tool as software.

 

Yep.
Now tests are good, then tomorrow, boom! It's gone.
However, beside backups, I check at times hdds with freeware Hdd Scan.

If I see that there are a lot of sectors with much delay, it rings a bell.

 

I like Libre Hardware Monitor on Windows. Gives you readouts (and graphs & logging) for SMART values (SSDs, HDDs), CPU, GPU, fan, temperature, motherboard, network, voltage, PSU, RAM, battery sensors.

https://github.com/LibreHardwareMonitor/LibreHardwareMonitor

 

Yup clone, I do have that one, thanks though for the rec. Appreciated.

 

downloaded just for weeb themes. THANK YOU.

 

MHDD It has saved my life more than once. To make a bootable pendrive you need to have access to Windows XP.

https://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Edit: but I use this program mainly to repair HDDs, for diagnostics I only need CrystalDiskInfo

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2026 at 3:14 PM