A disk drive is disclosed comprising a disk media, a head stack assembly (HSA) having a head coupled to its distal end, a microactuator used to provide fine position of the head and a voice coil motor (VCM) configured to actuate the HSA over the disk media, and control circuitry. The control circuitry may be configured to move the HSA in an alternating manner across the disk media while actuating the microactuator. One or more performance characteristics of the microactuator may be measured before and after the actuation of the microactuator, and failure may be detected based on the absolute or relative change of the one or more performance characteristics.