You want a number. Something that says how much life is left in the drive holding everything you own, before it takes the lot with it.
Windows has that number. It does not have it for every drive. Nothing on screen tells you which camp yours is in.
I went looking on this laptop first, and what I found is that the answer splits three ways before you have even opened Settings. So I have put the test that sorts you into one of the three at the top.
First, which kind of drive do you actually have
Everything below depends on this, and one line answers it without administrator rights. Open PowerShell and run `Get-PhysicalDisk`. The MediaType and BusType columns are the two that matter.
BusType NVMe is the camp Windows reports on. Anything else, and the health panel described everywhere will not be there for you. MediaType SSD with BusType SATA is a different camp, even though it is still a solid state drive.
HDD is the third, and it gets the least of all. The difference between the two kinds is worth knowing before you shop.
The three numbers, if you are on NVMe
They live behind a route nobody finds by accident.
Microsoft's storage warning page gives the path on Windows 11: Start, then "Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes", then Properties on the drive.
On Windows 10 it is shorter. Microsoft gives "Settings > System > Storage > Manage disks and volumes".
Three things appear there, and Microsoft names them: "Estimated remaining life," "Available spare," and "Temperature". Properties is the click people miss. The drive list shows nothing. The health is one level deeper.
What Windows actually says when it is worried
Three warnings, each with wording worth recognizing. The first is "Spare capacity is low." Microsoft's explanation: "Spare storage capacity is below the manufacturer's safety threshold."
The second is "Reliability is degraded." In Microsoft's words, "because of significant media-related errors or an internal error to the NVM subsystem." The last one is "Drive is set to read-only."
Microsoft is blunt about that one: "Data stored on the device can still be accessed but you can't write to it." The instruction is not subtle either: "We strongly recommend you pay attention to this message. Back up your data."
The number that talks people out of worrying
This is the part that costs data, and it comes from an owner rather than a manual. An owner posting on Microsoft Q&A reported Reliability Degraded with Available spare at 97% and Temperature at 37°C.
Both of those look fine. Neither is near a threshold, and a reasonable person reads them and relaxes. Estimated remaining life on that same drive read "Limited." One field said replace me while two said nothing is wrong.
Read all three, and let the worst one decide. Two healthy numbers do not outvote one bad one.
If the health section is simply not there
Not a fault, and this is the sentence that settles it. Microsoft states the limit outright: "Windows only monitors NVM SSD and not SATA SSD or hard disk drives (HDD)." So on a SATA SSD, there is nothing to find.
The panel is absent by design, not broken and not missing from your edition. An owner on Microsoft Q&A hit exactly this, reporting that "the whole section of device health is not showing" on Windows 11 Home.
The thread was never resolved. What is left there is the maker's own utility. Every large drive brand publishes one, and it reads the drive directly instead of asking Windows.
The command every old answer gives you, which is gone
Worth knowing before you paste something that cannot work. Two responders on Microsoft Q&A pointed at `wmic diskdrive get status`, which returns OK or Pred Fail.
Microsoft removed that tool. Its deprecation page carries an "[Update – August 2026]" saying WMIC "is removed and is no longer available as a Feature on Demand (FoD) on Windows 11, version 24H2 and above."
On this laptop, running 25H2, the command is not found at all. Checked here rather than assumed, and any page still teaching it predates that. The removal caught a lot of scripts with it.
The PowerShell route, and the error that misleads you
There is a real command, and its failure message names the wrong problem. `Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter` is the documented one.
Microsoft says it covers "device temperature, errors, wear, and length of time the device has been in use." Wear is the field you want.
Microsoft defines it as a percentage where "At 100 percent, the estimated wear limit will have been reached."
Run it as a normal user here and it fails with "Access to a CIM resource was not available to the client." PowerShell categorizes that as PermissionDenied, and the words on screen never say administrator.
Wear can come back blank even then. Microsoft's own documented example output shows the field empty, so do not read a blank as good news about your drive.
What this machine reports
Ours, checked before any of the above was written down. One drive, an INTEL SSDPEKNU512GZ of 477 GB, MediaType SSD, BusType NVMe. `Get-Disk` reads Healthy and Online, and it needs no administrator.
That is the cheap check, and it will work on your machine too. Healthy there is a coarse answer, and I read it as the drive saying it has not failed yet, not as a figure for life left.
The reliability counters would not open as a standard user, so the wear percentage for this drive is not published here. A tool reading a number is not the same as a tool interpreting it.
**Status: checked 18 September 2026 on Windows 11 Home, build 26200, version 25H2. The drive list, the bus type, Get-Disk and the reliability counters were all run here, and wmic was tested for and is absent.
Microsoft's storage warning page supplied the Settings routes, the three attribute names and the three warning texts. No drive was written to and nothing was changed.**
How do I check SSD health in Windows 11?
Go to Settings, System, Storage, Advanced storage settings, Disks & volumes, then Properties on your drive.
Estimated remaining life, Available spare and Temperature appear there. Microsoft only reports these for NVMe drives, so a SATA SSD shows nothing.
Why is there no drive health section in my Windows Settings?
Almost certainly because your drive is not NVMe. Microsoft states that Windows only monitors NVM SSD, not SATA SSD or hard disk drives. Run Get-PhysicalDisk and look at BusType. If it does not say NVMe, the panel was never going to appear.
What does "estimated remaining life: limited" mean?
It means the drive is at or near the wear limit its maker set.
One owner reported it alongside a 97% available spare and a normal temperature, so the other two numbers can look perfectly healthy while this one does not. Treat it as the deciding field.
Does wmic diskdrive get status still work?
No. Microsoft's deprecated features page recorded in August 2026 that WMIC is removed and is no longer available as a Feature on Demand on Windows 11 version 24H2 and above.
On a 25H2 machine the command is not found. Older answers still recommend it.
The Short Version
- Run `Get-PhysicalDisk` first. BusType decides whether Windows has anything to tell you.
- NVMe gets a health panel under Settings, Storage, Advanced storage settings, Disks & volumes, then Properties.
- Three fields appear: Estimated remaining life, Available spare, Temperature.
- A fine spare figure and a fine temperature can sit next to a Limited life figure. The worst one wins.
- Microsoft says plainly that Windows does not monitor SATA SSDs or hard drives this way.
- On a SATA drive, use the drive maker's own utility instead.
- `wmic diskdrive get status` is gone from Windows 11 24H2 and above, confirmed absent here on 25H2.
- `Get-StorageReliabilityCounter` needs administrator, and its error message does not say so.
Where to Next
If the answer that comes back is a worn drive, fitting the replacement is a four minute job once you know what the slot takes.
Find out which bus your drive is on before you go hunting through Settings, because that one answer decides the rest.
If it is NVMe, open Properties and read all three fields rather than the first one that looks reassuring. If it is SATA, stop looking in Windows and download the utility from whoever made the drive.
And whatever the numbers say, a drive that has started reporting anything unusual deserves a backup today rather than a plan for the weekend.
If your drive showed a combination this article does not cover, say which three values you saw in the comments. That pattern is worth collecting.
Isaac Smith is the founder and editor of PC Glance, a website that covers computers, laptops, and technology. He is a tech enthusiast and a computer geek who loves to share his insights and help his readers make smart choices when buying tech gadgets or laptops. He is always curious and updated about the latest tech trends.