Disk Diagnostics and Recovery with PowerShell

PowerShell allows you to automate checks, perform remote diagnostics, and create flexible scripts for monitoring. This guide will walk you through basic checks to in-depth disk diagnostics and recovery.

Version: This guide is relevant for Windows 10/11 and Windows Server 2016+.

Contents

Key Cmdlets for Disk Management
Step 1: Basic System Health Check
- Viewing all connected disks
- Checking physical disk health
Step 2: Analyzing and Recovering Logical Volumes
- Information about logical volumes
- Checking and repairing a volume (analogous to chkdsk)
Step 3: In-depth Diagnostics and S.M.A.R.T.
- Analyzing system logs
- Checking S.M.A.R.T. status
Practical Scenarios for a System Administrator

Key Cmdlets for Disk Management

Cmdlet	Purpose
`Get-PhysicalDisk`	Information about physical disks (model, health status).
`Get-Disk`	Information about disks at the device level (Online/Offline status, partition style).
`Get-Partition`	Information about partitions on disks.
`Get-Volume`	Information about logical volumes (drive letters, file system, free space).
`Repair-Volume`	Check and repair logical volumes (analogous to `chkdsk`).
`Get-StoragePool`	Used for working with Storage Spaces.

Step 1: Basic System Health Check

Start with a general assessment of the disk subsystem’s health.

Viewing all connected disks

Get-Disk command provides summary information about all disks seen by the operating system.

Get-Disk

You will see a table with disk numbers, their sizes, status (Online or Offline), and partition style (MBR or GPT).

Example: Find all disks that are offline.

Get-Disk | Where-Object IsOffline -eq $true

Checking physical disk health

Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet accesses the state of the hardware itself.

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

Pay special attention to the HealthStatus field. It can take the following values:

Healthy: The disk is fine.
Warning: There are issues, attention is required (e.g., S.M.A.R.T. thresholds exceeded).
Unhealthy: The disk is in a critical state and may fail.

Step 2: Analyzing and Recovering Logical Volumes

After checking the physical condition, we move on to the logical structure — volumes and the file system.

Information about logical volumes

Get-Volume command shows all mounted volumes in the system.

Get-Volume | Format-Table DriveLetter, FileSystem, HealthStatus, SizeRemaining, Size

Key fields:

DriveLetter — Volume letter (C, D, etc.).
FileSystem — File system type (NTFS, ReFS, FAT32).
HealthStatus — Volume status.
SizeRemaining and Size — Free and total space.

Checking and repairing a volume (analogous to `chkdsk`)

Repair-Volume cmdlet is a modern replacement for the chkdsk utility.

1. Checking a volume without repairs (scan only)

This mode is safe to run on a running system; it only looks for errors.

Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -Scan

2. Full scan and error correction

This mode is analogous to chkdsk C: /f. It locks the volume during operation, so a reboot will be required for the system drive.

Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -OfflineScanAndFix

❗️ Important: If you run this command for the system drive (C:), PowerShell will schedule a check on the next system boot. To run it immediately, restart your computer.

Example: Automatically check and repair all volumes whose status is not Healthy.

Get-Volume | Where-Object {$_.HealthStatus -ne 'Healthy'} | ForEach-Object {
    Write-Host "Repairing volume $($_.DriveLetter)..."
    Repair-Volume -DriveLetter $_.DriveLetter -OfflineScanAndFix
}

Step 3: In-depth Diagnostics and S.M.A.R.T.

If basic checks did not reveal problems, but suspicions remain, you can dig deeper.

Analyzing system logs

Disk subsystem errors are often recorded in the Windows system log.

Get-WinEvent -LogName System | Where-Object {$_.Message -like "*disk*"} | Select-Object -First 20

For a more precise search, you can filter by event source:

Get-WinEvent -ProviderName 'Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnostic' -MaxEvents 10

Checking S.M.A.R.T. status

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a disk self-diagnosis technology. PowerShell allows you to get this data.

Method 1: Using WMI (for compatibility)

Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\wmi" -Class MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus

If PredictFailure = True, the disk predicts an imminent failure. This is a signal for immediate replacement.

Method 2: Modern approach via CIM and Storage modules

A more modern and detailed way is to use the Get-StorageReliabilityCounter cmdlet.

Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object PhysicalDisk, Wear, Temperature, ReadErrorsTotal, WriteErrorsTotal

This cmdlet provides valuable information such as wear (relevant for SSDs), temperature, and the number of read/write errors.

Practical Scenarios for a System Administrator

Here are some ready-made examples for everyday tasks.

1. Get a brief report on the health of all physical disks.

Get-PhysicalDisk | Format-Table DeviceID, FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus

2. Create a CSV report on free space on all volumes.

Get-Volume | Select-Object DriveLetter, FileSystemLabel, @{N='Size(GB)';E={[math]::Round($_.Size / 1GB, 2)}}, @{N='FreeSpace(GB)';E={[math]::Round($_.SizeRemaining / 1GB, 2)}} | Export-Csv -Path C:\Reports\DiskSpace.csv -NoTypeInformation -Encoding UTF8

3. Find all partitions on a specific disk (e.g., disk 0).

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 0

4. Run system disk diagnostics with subsequent reboot.

Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -OfflineScanAndFix
Restart-Computer -Force