How Does Chkdsk Check a Hard Disk?

Introduction

Chkdsk is a utility command for Windows, DOS and OS/2. Chkdsk is used to find and fix errors on the hard drive. Chkdsk can also check the integrity status of the disk drives or just display the file system. The command is usually run from the command prompt or Windows shell.
The power of the Chkdsk command is its ability to look for bad sectors on the hard disk. Part of the hard disk has round magnetic disks that store the data. On each disk is a track. The track is then divided into sectors and data is stored. If there are bad sectors, it can be difficult to save or retrieve data on these tracks. Chkdsk finds these bad sectors and reports them back to the hard disk or repairs them based on the specifications given in the command.

The Command

To run Chkdsk, you must first be in a program that will understand the command, such as the MS-DOS prompt or the Windows shell. If using Windows XP or Vista, you can check for errors on a disk by going to the "My Computer" screen and right-clicking on the drive you want to check. Click on "Properties" and then choose the Tools tab. Click on "Check Now" to run the Chkdsk utility. If you are using an earlier version of Windows, you will need to type the command in a command prompt.
There are many variations to how to type the command, depending on which optional parameters you want to set. If you just want to scan the hard drive (usually C:), then you need only one basic command:
Chkdsk C:
This command will scan the C drive and return a log of any errors found, but it will not do anything with them. To automatically fix the errors, add to the command:
Chkdsk /F C:
This command will scan the C drive for bad sectors and automatically fix them. More than anything, this variation of the command is done more often. It is also the command to use in Windows XP or Vista. Other parameters that can be added to the command are "/R" for trying to recover any bad sectors, "/X" for closing any files before scanning and "/C" to skip the corruption checks.

Fixing Errors

While running Chkdsk, an error message might pop up. Chkdsk cannot be done on the boot partition until the next time the computer is booting up. You can always schedule a Chkdsk on the boot files so that it is done automatically. This is done by using the Chktnfs or Fsutil commands. The next time that the computer restarts, the Chkdsk command will execute.

[AVTrailBlazers]

on 7/5/2009 Always trying to find new ways to make my pc more healthy