Articles - Continued

CHKDSK – what is this random assortment of letters – some sort of acronym?

Chkdsk is actually short for Checkdisk, which is what is known as a command in DOS (disk operating system) and also a feature of the Windows operating system by Microsoft. What chkdsk does is verify your hard drive or some sort of floppy disk for system integrity or to see if it is functioning properly. Chkdsk also details and fixes errors on the particular disk. Errors are shown by what is known as a status report which details the file allocation table and associated directories as well as a summary of disk usage, but does not verify if this data can be read with any degree of accuracy.  Once the scan is complete, if there are errors found, chkdsk will alert the computer user.  If one is running a Unix based system, the shortened form is called ‘fsck’.

While CHKDSK served and still serves a purpose on a computer system, there is another program which many people prefer to use, called SCANDISK which is available on more recent versions of Windows.

 If one wants to run CHKDSK  from the command prompt, you should first go and click start, then run. Once in ‘open’,  key in cmd & press enter. If one wishes to run this utility in read only mode, simply type chkdsk and press enter. By entering chkdsk volume:/f at the command prompt ( C:/), the utility will fix errors without doing a scan of the volume for sectors that are known as ‘bad’.

If one is to alter this command slightly by changing it to volume:/r, this will perform the function of repairing errors that exist, locating bad sectors and recovering readable data.

Another alternative to run chkdsk from a Windows based computer is to double click the My Computer icon and then with a right click of a mouse select the hard disk that you wish to check. Proceed next to properties then tools. Go to the error checking area and then check now, which will then cause a box to appear which will present some options as to how you can perform the scan ( as referenced above). However , it is good to be aware that if there are files open ( on the hard disk), even just one file, an error message will appear.