Check Disk or Chkdsk.exe is a built-in Windows utility used to check for errors in the disk media and in the file system. If you face Problem ranging from blue screens to inability to open or save files or Folder, one can run the Check Disk utility. Whenever we need to detect and fix file system or disk corruption, we run the built-in Windows CheckDisk tool. The Check Disk utility or ChkDsk.exe Checks file system errors, bad sectors, lost clusters, and so on. Check Disk can run automatically, in the case of an abrupt shutdown or if it finds the file system to be ‘dirty’.
We can say that there are “two versions” of this utility in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. One is the basic version which most of us use and the other is the command line version, which has more set of options. The basic version of the Check Disk utility can be accessed as follows : Open Computer> Right-click Drive > Properties > Tools tab > Check Now. Here you have options to Automatically Fix File System Errors and Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors.
You may have to schedule the chkdsk at reboot, if the drive to be checked, is in use.
Command Line Check Disk
And then there is this command line version of chkdsk, which offers you several options, apart from just allowing you to set up regular disk checking using the Task Scheduler .
To use the command line check disk version, open a Command Prompt using the ‘Run As Administrator’ option. Typechkdsk at the prompt. This will run Chkdsk in a Read-Only mode and display the status of the current drive.
Typing chkdsk /? and hitting Enter will give you its parameters or switches.
To get a report for, say, drive C , use chkdsk c: .
You can also use the following parameters at the end of the command to specialize its operations.
The following are valid on FAT32 / NTFS volumes.
/f Fixes errors detected.
/r Identifies Bad Sectors and attempts recovery of information.
/v Displays list of every file in every directory, on FAT32. On NTFS, is displays the cleanup messages.
The following are valid on NTFS volumes only.
/c Skips the checking of cycles within the Folder Scheduler.
/I Performs a simpler check of index entries.
/x Forces the volume to dismount. Also invalidates all Open file handles. This should be avoided in Desktop Editions of Vista, because of possibility of data loss/corruption.
/l[:size] It changes the size of the file that logs NTFS transactions. This option too, like the above one, is intended for server administrators ONLY.
Do note that, when you boot to the Windows Recovery Environment, Only two switches may be available.
/p It performs an exhaustive check of the current disk
/r It repairs possible damage on the current disk
To cancel a scheduled check, at a command prompt, type
chkntfs /x d:
and hit enter. Here d is the drive letter.
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