Checking Your Disks For Problems
How To Check Your Disks For Problems
Windows contains a few utilities to correct disk and system file errors.
These are often used by Geeks and techs as a way to quickly eliminate a cause of problems and/or after cleaning a virus from a system.
Note – With NTFS file systems these tools do not need to be, and should not be run unless a problem is suspected.
Check Disk
The most commonly used is Check Disk (a.k.a. – chkdsk, or disk check).
This checks the file system for errors. This can also be useful if the system was shut down unexpectedly due to a power loss.
To run it open Computer > right-click on the partition you wish to check and choose Properties > click the Tools tab > in the Error-checking section click the Check now… button.
In the Resulting screen ensure the Automatically fix file system errors box is checked, then click start.
If this is your Windows partition you’ll need to reboot for the scan to take place.
To find info on the previous scan go to Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application > in the Source column find a line with 1-Wininit for drives scanned on reboot or 2-Chkdsk for drives scanned while running Windows.
System File Checker
The second tool is System File Checker (a.k.a. – SFC)
This checks for and replaces corrupt system files. This of course is only for your Windows drive or partition.
To run it open a Command Windows as admin (in the Search box type cmd > in the results right-click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator).
In the resulting window type sfc /scannow (if you are like me and want to see whats up before fixing any issues then use sfc /VERIFYONLY).
To view the results of this scan go to C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log.
great ! I’m currently having some problems with my SSD drive in my Asus EEE 901 netbook. It has 2 ssd disks (some slow asus phisons).
For some time I notice that my system somehow overwrites my files without showing any errors.
Example:
I had a very important Excel file with work hours my wife made so far.
Yesterday I noticed that it was overwritten with some random data like folder paths etc :| no Excel data (xlsm format).
I tried doing recovery – nothing
I tried chkdsk – and that’s weird. For some reason it’s not working with SSD ? I mean, normally chkdsk is doing 5 or 6 steps (with sectors recovery).
When I’m trying chkdsk with ssd disk (on boot) then I don’t see any steps.
Maybe I should use some kind of tool for ssd checking or something?
My first instinct would be to run sfc /scannnow but maybe a bit of research is in order.
For the chkdsk issue:
Chkdsk doesn’t know or care about what type of drive it is on and I have never heard of any issues with SSD’s.
Googling ‘windows 7 chkdsk boot not working’ the second link leads to here:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-performance/chkdsk-does-not-run-on-startup/79a94864-c946-474b-a53d-28cbb8c164c8
You may want to check the links there.
For the overwriting files issue:
I’ve never encountered that issue. Files should not be overwritten unless it has been deleted. I can only speculate as to the cause and it sounds as though the file system is corrupt. If that is the case then we are back to the solution you tried and that is running chkdsk.
As to recovering the file. Do you have System Restore enabled? If so have you tried “restore previous version”? ( http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Previous-versions-of-files-frequently-asked-questions )