I'd like to be able to get to System Information on an externally attached Windows Vista to Windows 10 drive, such as if the disk isn't booting or is corrupted or has bad sectors.
Just to be able to know all that info from a damaged drive.
You would have to take “Ownership” of the drive when connected. Change Owner of File, Folder, Drive, or Registry Key in Windows 10
I`m not sure if System Information would show you that type of information, you need to use Check Disk or there are a lot of free programs you can use like Crystral Disk.
Download CrystalDiskInfo - MajorGeeks
If you have the HDD attached as USB drive or internally as a Secondary drive, Download HD Tune, not Pro. Select the drive from the Drop down menu. Go to the Error Scan tab, run and Error Scan, not Quick Scan. This will take a while as it will scan the whole drive. If it's all Green then it is good to go. If any of the blocks turn RED, that indicates Bad Sectors. One or Two is ok, but more then that and the drive is beginning to fail and needs to be replaced.
In addition to the comments above the drive can be tested for problems with the drive file system.
For older and larger drives its best to schedule the testing when there is a lot of downtime for windows drives.
For non-Windows drives there is more flexibility.
A substantial portion of the testing can be performed overnight.
Again this is an additional test.
Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:
chkdsk /r /v
This may take hours to run so plan to run overnight.
Run on all drives using the syntax: chkdsk /r /v C: or chkdsk /r /v D: changing the drive letter to the applicable drive.
C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /r /v
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
Type: Y
reboot
Use the information in this link to find the chkdsk report in the event viewer. Copy and paste into notepad > save to desktop > post into the thread using one drive or drop box share link:
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10
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