How to Test Western Digital Hard Drive And Make It Faster

Why need to test Western Digital hard drive?

Western Digital Corporation is a well-known hard disk manufacturer. With high-quality HDD and SSD, it is deeply loved by many users. In addition, Western Digital's product covers enterprise servers, mobile storage applications, etc.

Why need to test Western Digital hard drive? When you first get a new Western Digital hard drive, to make sure it will work properly and run faster, you need to test its performance. Besides, after you’ve been using it for a while and something goes wrong with it, you'll also want to check it out and fix it.

About Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics

As a hard disk production giant, Western Digital also has its own hard drive diagnostic tool - Data LifeGuard Diagnostics (DLGDIAG). You can use this tool to identify, diagnose and repair Western Digital hard drives.

On Windows systems, Data LifeGuard Diagnostics for Windows can test hard drives of all brand. You can know the basic information of the hard drive, including model, serial number, capacity, SMART status, drive letter, file system, etc.

● Test Western Digital hard drive with it

If you want to use this Western Digital hard drive test tool, please follow the steps below:

Step 1. Download DLGDIAG for Windows from Western Digital support, extract and install it.

Step 2. Right-click the hard drive and select "Run Diagnostics", there're four test options: Quick test, Extended test, Erase, View test results.

Step 3. If you want to do a SMART test, you can select this test mode and click "Start". In the new window, click "OK" to continue. Then wait for a while.

Step 4. Choose the extended test, it will scan the hard drive to find out bad sectors, and try to repair them. You will spend more time than the quick test.

Step 5. Select "Full Erase" to erase the whole hard drive or "Quick Erase" to erase the first and last million sectors of the drive.

Step 6. Click "View test result" and "Start". Then you can see the recent test results.

How to test Western Digital hard drive and speed up it 

 In addition to Data LifeGuard Diagnostics, you can also try a more powerful Western Digital hard drive test software -AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.This tool is compatible with Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP.

With this tool, you can not only test the speed of the hard drive, but also check the health of the hard drive. If there are problems like bad sectors and file fragments on the hard disk, you can solve them in time and speed the hard drive up.

In addition, it can also work on resizing partitions, wiping hard drive, formatting volumes, changing drive letters, etc.

● Part 1. Test Western Digital hard drive

How to perform Western Digital hard drive test? Read on, you can learn the detailed steps.

▶ Case 1. Disk Speed test

In order to test the transmission speed of WD hard drive, you can try "Disk Speed Test" function.

Step 1. Open this Western Digital hard drive tester, then click "Test" and "Disk Speed Test".

Step 2. Choose the target drive and click "Start" to begin test it.

Step 3. Wait for a while, then you can see the testing results.

Step 4.  When you want a deep test, you can click "Pro Mode".

Step 5. More information will appear in the new window.

▶ Case 2. Check partition

You can also use "Check Partition" to find errors in the file system to ensure the health of the hard drive.

Step 1. Right-click on the partition you want to test, then choose "Advanced" and "Check Partition".

Step 2. There are 3 methods to check your hard drive, click the second option and click "OK".

Step 3. Wait patiently, then click "OK" when the operation is finished.

Note: In addition, when you received a warning that the hard disk is about to fail, you can also check disk health.

● Part 2. Measures to fix the problems found

When you find that there is a problem with the hard disk, don’t worry, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you solve it effectively.

▶ Case 1. Disk Defrag

When there are too many file fragments in the WD hard drive, its work efficiency will be reduced. Since the fragments are distributed in different locations on the hard drive, the disk head will spend more time reading file fragments, so the speed of reading the hard disk will slow down.

Step 1. Right-click on the target drive and click "Disk Defrag".

Step 2. Select the partition to analyze and then click "Analyze".

Step 3. Tick the drive you want to defrag and click "Defrag". 

Step 4. Wait for some minutes, the tool will defrag the disk.

▶ Case 2. Fix bad sectors

When there are bad sectors in the hard drive, they may cause some errors on the disk. Here, you can directly remove them in "Check Partition".

Step 1. Right-click the target partition and click "Check Partition".

Step 2. Select "Check partition and fix errors in this partition by using chkdsk.exe", click "OK".

Step 3. When the task is completed, click "OK".

▶ Case 3. Move all data to the new hard drive

If you find the WD hard drive is damaged by testing it, to avoid data loss, you’d better move the data to another disk. Please turn to the Professional Version and migrate the WD hard drive to a new one.

Step 1. Connect the new hard drive with your PC, then click "Clone" and "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose "Clone Disk Quickly" and click "Next". 

Step 3. Select the source disk and click "Next".

Step 4. Choose the destination drive to store the data of the source disk, tick "Optimize the performance of SSD" and click "Next".

Step 5. Edit the sizes of partition on the new hard drive.

Step 6. Click "Apply" and "Proceed" to perform the operation.

Note: If you have cloned the whole disk including the system, don't forget to change boot drive.

Final Words

How to test Western Digital hard drive? In this tutorial, we shared some methods to test your WD hard drive, and provided several solutions when there're some problems. If you want to manage your disk more effectively, the AOMEI can be your first choice.

By the way, if your system is Windows Server, you can turn to the Server Edition to test your WD hard drive.