CHKDSK

As the saying goes, ‘an apple a day, keeps the doctor away’. But occasional trips to the doctor are needed to ensure that all well. As they also say, prevention is better than cure. A computer is like a human. You need to do occasional check ups on its health to ensure that everything is all right with the machine. Certain programs have in-built doctors who ensure that none of the components are ‘sick’ CHKDSK is one such doctor. The Chkdsk command creates and exhibits status reports for disks based on the file system. It also catalogs and fixes errors on the disk. The chkdsk command also shows the status of the disk in the existing drive.

All your important information is stored in the hard drives. Everything in this world runs on information. Thus hard disks are very crucial components in today’s fast information age. So it is all the more important to protect the hard disks from errors and crashes resulting in loss of information.

Hard disk drives can crash due to a variety of reasons. But whatever the reasons are, the bottom line is that you have to restore the data and get the disk up and running. Most hard disks show signs of cracking up. If you notice any of the symptoms, you must take proper precautions. You can prevent these crashes by proper maintenance of the computer. The chkdsk utility is a good option for scanning and repairing bad sectors.

Chkdsk is a software utility that is intended to locate various kinds of errors and fix some file system faults on hard disks. If your PC has shut down, then this Chkdsk software usually starts automatically the next time you switch on your computer. It scans the hard disk, identifies any errors to the file system and finally tries to mend them.

You must never use the Chkdsk command when files are open. This command should only be used when the files on the disk are not changing. If you use Chkdsk on the open files, then it interprets the differences between the directory structure and the file allocation tables as faults. It can also result in fraud or loss of information.

The Chkdsk command does not check or fix errors and bad errors by itself. In order to repair faults with the help of this, the /F parameter should be mentioned. For the purpose of checking for bad sectors, the /R parameter should be mentioned.

On machines running on Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1, the chkdsk command automatically generates a shadow copy before checking any volume so that you are able to inspect volumes that are already in use by any another program. With the help of the shadow copy, chkdsk correctly identifies errors on volumes that are utilized. However, on machines without Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, running the chkdsk function without restrictions on an active system might erroneously report errors when no errors might be present.

Using the Chkdsk Error Check tool is simple. In fact users whose hard drive has been formatted using the FAT32 file system must run this test at least once every month, if not more. Windows usually perform a fundamental disk error check when you start your computer, on drives that have been formatted using the NTFS file format. Thus if you are using a NTFS formatted hard drive, then you need not perform this check.  To know what file system you are using, you can go to the General tab in the drive's properties window and find out.