AOMEI Partition Assistant
4 Proven Ways to Fix Hard Drive DST Short Test Fail
Hard drive DST short test fail error is a sign that there is something wrong with your hard drive, which has severe impacts on your PC. If you have met short DST test fail issue, you can use the 4 useful ways in this post to resolve it quickly.
By Hedy / Updated on May 12, 2023
Quick Navigation:
What does a hard drive DST short test fail mean?
DST (Drive Self-Test) is a Windows built-in program designed by some laptop manufacturers such as HP and Dell to confirm the physical integrity of your hard drive when you restart your system. It has two kinds: long DST test and short DST test.
DST short test takes less time to make sure all the major components on your hard drive like the ROM, motor, control board, and platters are functioning optimally, during which time you can still use the disk.
If the main components are functioning at acceptable levels, the short DST will be done normally and you won’t notice it. If there is something wrong with the hard disk, it will send you an error message followed by codes like 0146, 0142, 0141, etc. That is what we call hard drive DST short test fail.
What happens if hard drive DST short test fail?
When you receive the "short DST failed" error message, you need to keep a close eye on your hard drive performance because it is no longer performing properly. The following symptoms may occur:
◤ Your PC may perform very slowly or even stop running.
◤ Your hard drive may become unbootable.
◤ Your computer may keep restarting itself.
◤ A blank screen shows up.
How to fix hard drive DST short test fail error?
If your hard drive DST short test failed and the computer has the above symptoms, you can employ any one of the following fixes to fix the issue.
Method 1. Check hard drives for errors
A bad sector on the disk may lead to the hard drive failed short DST check. The common way is using Windows CHKDSK to scan and fix the errors on the selected partition with the specific command line.
Step 1. Press "Windows + R" keys, type "cmd" and hit "Enter" to bring out Command Prompt.
Step 2. Type "chkdsk g: /f" to find and repair any errors that are found in G drive. You can replace g with other drive letters of the partition you want to check.
Method 2. Updated the drivers
When the hard drive short DST check failed, you can head to see whether your device drives are out of date or not. Upgrading an outdated driver is one of the effective ways to resolve DST short test failure.
Step 1. Right-click on the Window icon in the bottom left-hand corner of your desktop screen and select "Device Manager".
Step 2. Double-click "Disk drives", highlight the hard drive, and right-click it, click "Update driver" or "Update Driver Software" from the drop-down box.
Step 3. In the new pop-up window, click on the first option "Search automatically for updated driver software".
Method 3. Restore system to a previous point
Another good way to solve hard drive DST short test failed error is to restore your current system to an earlier point where everything goes well. You can finish this task through Windows System Restore or Reset this PC features.
Tip: If you cannot boot into your PC, a recovery drive can bring you to Windows Recovery Environment (WinPE) to make it.
Step 1. Type "system restore" on the Search box and click "Create a restore point" from the list.
Step 2. In the pop-out window, click "System Restore" to start reverting.
Step 3. Follow the wizard to select the correct system point for restoring. When the computer restarts, check if the short DST test fail error is fixed or not.
Method 4. Replace the hard drive with a new one
If none of the above methods works or the hard drive DST short test fail error is caused by physical damage on the disk, you have no choice but to replace laptop hard drive that is failing with a good one.
For the sake of data security, you need a tool to clone all data from the old hard drive to the new drive. After cloning, everything on the new disk is the same as that on the old one. To make it, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, the best disk cloning software for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP/Vista systems, should be your top priority. Its "Disk Clone" feature can meet your needs in various situations:
✥ Copy all data to another drive, including hidden files and bad sectors.
✥ Clone hard drives of different kinds, brands, forms, partition styles (clone disk between MBR to GPT), and sizes (cloning larger hard drive to smaller one).
✥ Transfer only OS to SSD or copy a single partition.
✥Complete the cloning process without restarting or reinstalling Windows.
✥ Clone hard drive with a bootable USB (available when you fail to boot your PC).
Here are the steps to change a new hard drive with the clone feature, download the demo version to have a try:
Step 1. Prepare a new drive and connect it to your computer. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click "Clone" option and then select "Clone Disk".
Step 2. When selecting the cloning method, it’s recommended to choose "Clone Disk Quickly" that clones only used space to another disk, which can save space on the new drive.
Step 3. Select the disk you want to replace as the source disk and click "Next".
Step 4. Then select your new drive as the destination disk and click "Next". If the selected disk is an SSD. tick "Optimize the performance of SSD" by aligning its partitions.
Step 5. Then, you're allowed to resize partitions on the new drive as you like. If you don't know which one to choose, just keep the default choice and click "Next".
Step 6. After reading a note about how to boot from the destination disk as you may need this later, click "Finish" and then click "Apply" to begin cloning.
Conclusion
It's not a good thing to see hard drive DST short test fail. If you have encountered this issue, try the four methods mentioned above to fix it. Hope they are useful for you.
Moreover, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant to check the health of your hard drive regularly in case of any issue with the disk. If your hard drive short dst check failed on Windows Server, there is AOMEI Partition Assistant Server for you.
