How to Check a Hard Drive for Errors

Checking hard drive for errors is not a major issue. There are some features which are provided by the operating system itself to do so. But then, what could be the reasons that you would like to go for checking a hard drive for errors. Let us first delve into these reasons, so that we know, when is the right time to carry out error checking in a hard drive.

When to Check for Errors

Data is the most important resource in any organization, or for a matter of fact, for any individual. When a hard drive fails, it takes a lot of your important data along with it. Try to understand the initial signs that may point the chances of a disk failure. Once, you recognize the errors, you will find out that it's not that difficult to maintain the health of your hard drive. However, it is not necessary that your drive will show you some problems before it fails. One day your hard disk is performing well and the very next day, your processor is not even able to read it. However, normally the hard drive starts with a handful of bad sectors, which keep on multiplying over a period of time. If you are astute in marking these problems and going for the troubleshooting part, then you can just get a hand on it and save the important data in your drive. Let us take a look at some of the important points, which straight away indicate that you should check your hard drive for errors.

• If your hard disk makes strange noises, then it is the right time to check for errors.
• If your disk defragmentation program indicates that you should check your hard drive for bad sectors, then you should not even give it a second thought.
• If you are not able to access a particular portion of your hard drive (a particular file) or if one of your drives takes time in opening, then again, you should check the hard drive for speed.

How to Check Hard Drive for Errors

Anyone who has ever used DOS (Disk Operating System) of course must be acquainted with the chkdsk command. The command is still useful for most of the Windows operating systems. However, there are a lot more utilities that can be tried out.

Using Chkdsk
The chkdsk command can be used for sorting out a lot of hard drive problems. Some of them include lost cluster problems, cross linked files, directory errors and the most common - bad sectors problems. So, how can you use this command? You need to login into your computer as an administrator. Keep it in mind, this method is primarily useful for those who use the Windows operating system. Go to the DOS prompt, i.e. the command line. To do so, simply type, chkdsk <volume drive> on the command line. The amount of time, chkdsk takes to run will depend on the size of the drive and the number of files and folders in it.

So, what are the results that check disk shows. If it displays a 0, then it means that no errors were found. A 1 indicates that errors were found and resolved at the same time. 2 indicates that disk cleanup was performed. If /f was not specified then the disk cleanup may not have been performed. And if 3 is displayed, then it means that the errors could not be checked or fixed.

Using Windows Explorer
Here you will just be using the graphical user interface, but the process is still the same. The steps to do so can be listed as follows:

• Double click on My Computer and right click on the drive you want to check for errors.
• On the menu that is displayed on right clicking the drive, click on properties.
• Go to Tools and under Error Checking click on Check Now.
• Now you have three options to move ahead.
  1. Run chkdsk in read only mode. This can be done by simply clicking on Start
  2. Check the Automatically fix file system errors check box and click start, to start off with fixing the bad sector problems.
  3. Check Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box to locate bad sectors, repair them and recover readable information.

There are a number of free utilities that you can use to check your drive. Some of them provide features like, running on their own disk and not interfering with the working of your operating system. Error checking or scan disk is a free software, that comes along with Microsoft Windows. There are even some specific error checking utilities that come for a particular hard drive. For example, Fujitsu diagnostic tool is a free disk health monitoring utility that is meant for Fujitsu hard disks.