How do I check if my hard drive is messed up or broken?

[Ninjamo69]

My hdd light on my case is fully lit not blinking.
Also, my windows 10 wont load up so I'm assuming my hard drive is broken but I'm wondering how do I check if it is broken

 

[codygriffy]

1. Make sure all of your cables are plugged in every where.

2. If you have multiple sticks of ram, try starting up with only one inserted.

I'm leaning towards #1 as it sounds like something just isn't plugged in.

 

[Luminary]

If you can't boot at all then it is a sign that the drive might have totally died.

A couple options:

1) Double check all cables are correctly installed

2) If you have an external HDD/SSD enclosure or dock like this one then you can pull the drive and see if it can be accessed at all as an external drive on a different PC.

3) If you have a spare USB you could create a live LINUX install on the USB, boot into the Linux OS, and then run the available disk diagnostics on the Linux flavor you chose. Ubuntu would be a good choice just because there are so many tutorials on how to do exactly this process.

 

[codygriffy]

If you can't boot at all then it is a sign that the drive might have totally died.

A couple options:

1) Double check all cables are correctly installed

2) If you have an external HDD/SSD enclosure or dock like this one then you can pull the drive and see if it can be accessed at all as an external drive on a different PC.

3) If you have a spare USB you could create a live LINUX install on the USB, boot into the Linux OS, and then run the available disk diagnostics on the Linux flavor you chose. Ubuntu would be a good choice just because there are so many tutorials on how to do exactly this process.

Yes Luminary is right. If you have any other desktop sitting around or know someone with one. You can just plug your hard drive into it. Turn on that computer and go into windows. If the drive shows up and you can double click on it to access the information on it, then it is definitely fine.