How to Check If Your SSD Is Failing

SSDs rarely fail without warning, but the warning signs are easy to miss if you don't know what to look for. Catching a failing drive early can save your data.

The warning signs

• Frequent crashes, freezes, or blue screens
• Files that won't read or become corrupted
• The drive suddenly becoming read-only
• Slower performance that doesn't improve after a restart

How to check health

Use the drive's health monitoring tool, which reads the SMART data. A failing drive shows increasing errors and a declining health percentage. Both Windows and macOS have built-in ways to view this.

What to do

If the health is declining or you see warning signs, back up your data immediately, then plan to replace the drive. Once an SSD starts failing, it can go from working to dead quickly.

Watch for crashes and corrupted files, and check SMART health regularly. At the first sign of trouble, back up and replace the drive before it fails completely.