When using your computer regularly you need to keep up with computer maintenance and to check you hard disk drive for errors is one of those tasks. Your hard disk drive is where everything is stored on your computer so to say the hard drives performance is important is an understatement.
You can not only help solve some computer problems but you can also improve the performance of your computer by making sure that your hard disk has no errors.
What does Windows error checking do?
To automatically repair problems with files and folders that the scan detects, select Automatically fix file system errors. Otherwise, the disk check will simply report problems but not fix them.
To perform a thorough disk check, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This scan attempts to find and repair physical errors on the hard disk itself, and it can take much longer to complete.
To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
Depending upon the size of your hard disk, this may take several minutes. For best results, don’t use your computer for any other tasks while it’s checking for errors.
If you are interested in more computer maintenance tips please see my computer maintenance checklist.
Uchenna says
January 20, 2013 at 10:43 pmReally nice writeup, yea, the built in error-checker is not as sophisticated as your third-party solution, but it is able to find some errors and repair them. Personally, I tend to use is purely for running a sector scan to determine the integrity of my hard drive, in most other circumstances, I’ll use software. The built in tools, just aren’t as good as they were during the days of Windows 98.
Rupert Smith says
September 28, 2012 at 2:32 pmNice guide, I remember the scan disk application way back in Windows 98, this works pretty much the same way without the GUI. Ultimately your going to want to purchase some software, i.e. registry cleaner, malware remover, antispyware program, firewall and antivirus program, as a preventative measure.
Oliver says
March 29, 2012 at 10:40 amChecking hard disk for errors will keep everything normal on your hard disk and would rectify any errors. Precaution is better than cure.
So if you have done this, there is very minimum chances to face any hard disk errors or any data loss situations.
Thanks
Radhitya says
March 27, 2012 at 4:29 pmSimple tips but I’m sure many people do not know or at least not aware of this, I myself never use this feature. I just use a PC, reformat, reinstall when my PC slowed down
Fahad Zahid says
March 2, 2012 at 12:38 pmInteresting Observations! Determine Hard Disk errors is one of the most important task to perform! Due To Its Heavy Usage, Sometime bad sectors occurs in Hard Disk, So it is Quite Necessary to perform fragmentation frequently in order to prevent from Bad Sectors!
Margarita says
March 1, 2012 at 6:29 pmDo you mean BADSECTOR as other trojan virus? Yes, they can spread. You need BADSECTOR removal tool, otherwise you can get a computer cancer. Try free badsector removal too, which can remove the affected files, but also some DLL files. You can easily restore those from your Windows CD.
Farrel says
March 1, 2012 at 2:29 pmYour post makes me curious about doing this one. Its been 2 years using my personal computer not knowing to check and doing such manual maintenance. I just laugh in to myself. I’m using tune’up utilities for the guides to detect such problem in my software. Thanks you for your good advice on how to maintain the hard disk. I will look forward to apply your good advises by monthly to prevent serious damage to my PC. It said that prevention is better than cure.