Determining S.M.A.R.T disk drive status from a command prompt

Many hard disk drives have a Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) capability. On a Microsoft Windows system, you can use a utility such as SpeedFan to query the S.M.A.R.T, or SMART, information for a drive. You can also check the status of a drive using a Windows Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) command by issuing the command wmic diskdrive get status at a command prompt, though you won't get the same level of detail. But if you have multiple drives in or atached to the system, you will need to use an additional parameter to identify which status applies to which drive. You could include the size and/or model, e.g.:

C:\Users\Lila>wmic diskdrive get status, size, model
Model                                   Size           Status
Seagate Backup+  Desk SCSI Disk Device  5000970240000  OK
Seagate Backup+ Desk USB Device         4000776192000  OK
Generic- Compact Flash USB Device                      OK
Generic- SD/MMC USB Device                             OK
Generic- MS/MS-Pro USB Device                          OK
WD My Book 1140 USB Device              2000363420160  OK
Generic- SM/xD-Picture USB Device                      OK
WDC WD4003FZEX-00Z4SA0 ATA Device       4000784417280  OK


C:\Users\Lila>

Or you could also query the media type, e.g., if you had just one internal and one external drive. E.g.:

C:\Users\Lila>wmic diskdrive get status, model, mediatype
MediaType                 Model                                   Status
External hard disk media  Seagate Backup+  Desk SCSI Disk Device  OK
External hard disk media  Seagate Backup+ Desk USB Device         OK
                          Generic- Compact Flash USB Device       OK
                          Generic- SD/MMC USB Device              OK
                          Generic- MS/MS-Pro USB Device           OK
External hard disk media  WD My Book 1140 USB Device              OK
                          Generic- SM/xD-Picture USB Device       OK
Fixed hard disk media     WDC WD4003FZEX-00Z4SA0 ATA Device       OK


C:\Users\Lila>

If you want to see all of the parameters that you can use with a wmic diskdrive get command, you can issue the command wmic diskdrive get /?

C:\Users\Lila>wmic diskdrive get /?

Property get operations.
USAGE:

GET [<property list>] [<get switches>]
NOTE: <property list> ::= <property name> | <property name>,  <property list>

The following properties are available:
Property                                Type                    Operation
========                                ====                    =========
Availability                            N/A                     N/A
BytesPerSector                          N/A                     N/A
Capabilities                            N/A                     N/A
CapabilityDescriptions                  N/A                     N/A
CompressionMethod                       N/A                     N/A
ConfigManagerErrorCode                  N/A                     N/A
ConfigManagerUserConfig                 N/A                     N/A
DefaultBlockSize                        N/A                     N/A
Description                             N/A                     N/A
DeviceID                                N/A                     N/A
ErrorCleared                            N/A                     N/A
ErrorDescription                        N/A                     N/A
ErrorMethodology                        N/A                     N/A
Press any key to continue, or press the ESCAPE key to stop

That will allow you to page through the options. Or you can use the command wmic diskdrive get /? >somefile.txt to redirect the output of the wmic command to a text file - see wmic_diskdrive.txt - that you can open with Windows Notepad that will show all of the options.