Scandisk is a utility in MS-DOS as well as Microsoft Windows systems that checks and repairs file systems as well as bad clusters on the main computer's hard drive. This utility is available in different versions of MS-DOS which are more user friendly as compared to the previous MS-DOS CHKDSK. The utility is designed to have more command line as well as other configuration options as well as the ability of detecting and sometimes recovering from physical errors on the disk that the previous utilities did not have. Unlike CHKDSK, this utility would also repair cross linked files. For computers that are running on Windows 95 and onwards, this utility had a graphical user interface although the text interface was also available for use in single tasking DOS mode.
This utility is not capable of checking NTFS disk drives and therefore it is not available for computers that are running on NT based versions of Windows such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP and here you can use a newer CHKDSK which you must be careful so as not to confuse with the older MS-DOS CHKDSK. This utility is one of the most common maintenance tools bundled with an operating system such as Windows. This is an application which is used in checking the hard drive of the main computer system for any errors and bad sectors. This application first scans the hard disk and if it finds any errors it will attempt to fix them. The errors which are found inside a hard drive are caused by several reasons namely:
Frequent system crashes
Existence of harmful programs such as Trojans, viruses etc
Critical system applications that have been improperly closed
Whenever this application is running it is always checking the defects in the platters of the hard disk which are the round steel plates in the hard drive on which data is stored. The application will also check file systems such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS etc. the application also searches and corrects the lost and bad clusters that have been created when a certain program gets aborted. After the application finishes its tasks it provides a report which will contain the errors it has found if any and the amount of disk space it has scanned. This means that it is important for users to always use this application because it ensures that their data is safe from being corrupted.
Apart from that there is also the guarantee that your computer will perform at optimum performance levels. This application has a graphical user interface where you can find buttons, progress bars as well as information regarding the status of the scan as well as the errors if any. Running this application in Windows 2000 and Windows XP will require you to follow several steps starting with double clicking the My Computer icon then highlighting the disk you wish to scan. Open the File menu and select the Properties options and select the Tools tab and then click on the Check Now button and the scanning will start.
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This article touched the basics of the topic. I have 2 more detailed resources related to the above. They are scandisk and scandisk . They are worth a read.
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