[TIP] How to check your disk for errors

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All your important data and programs live on your hard disks. You need to keep good care of them to have a reliable computing environment. Part of good system housekeeping involves checking that there are no disk errors. In a crash situation, data can become corrupted and lead to further data loss if not rectified promptly. Windows has a number of utilities to verify things are running well.

Here we examine the disk check utility.

When to run it: As part of normal system maintenance, and certainly after any system crash, interruption, or unexpected failure you should always check your disk drives for errors and fix any found. Failure to do this can result in further corruption and data loss - do this immediately after restarting your system.

Normal maintenance frequency: It is suggested you do this weekly, and also just before you backup any data from your system - depending on how much data you can afford to lose if the disk errors are fatal.

Here is how to do it: These instructions are for Windows XP, but other versions will be very similar.

Note: Make sure you do this before you start any programs as you want to fix the errors before the programs see them.

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. In the My Computer window, right-click the hard disk you want to scan for errors, and then click Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab.
4. Click the Check Now button.
5. In the Check Disk dialog box, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.
6. In most circumstances, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors - note that this adds a significant amount of time to the scan duration.
7. If bad sectors are found, choose to fix them.
8. When you have finished, bring down your system normally and start it up again to complete the procedure.

Tip: Only select the Automatically fix file system errors check box if you think that your disk contains bad sectors.

If your drive contains many files such as BearShare downloads, checking time may be quite extended. Do not be tempted to cancel the check, as data recovery will certainly take a lot longer if any disk problems are not rectified. Sometimes errors may take more than one checking cycle, or even a system reboot to rectify.

Alternatives: Norton Systemworks and Spinrite are two alternatives that examine disks for errors in far more detail, but they don't come free with Windows.