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The CHKDSK utility that is part of Windows helps prevent seemingly minor problems with your drive from becoming major corruption issues for your system.
Here's how to check and repair your drive:
1. Select Start
2. Then Run
Next, you'll see the command line
3. On the command line type in CMD
Next, if you were to just type in CHKDSK in the Run field, you'd get an analysis of your drive's bad clusters, as well as information on how much free space and how many files you have. It won't fix anything.
To fix it run the command with the /f parameter (chkdsk /f.) Any logical disk errors will be fixed. This fixes the file system view of the disk.
By using the command with the /r parameter (chkdsk /r), any physical disk errors will be identified and the file system will not use them.
4. So, to use both parameters, so you're fixing the logical errors and avoiding the physical errors. type in: chkdsk /f /r
That's it!
If you're interested, here's a little background information:
Every disk drive has clusters, which are a set of disk sectors that the Windows file system (there are two Windows file systems - called NTFS or FAT) treats as a unit. A sector is the smallest unit of physical storage and takes up 512 bytes on the drive. A cluster is the smallest unit of storage that the file system can manage. For example, if a 1KB file is stored in a system with a 32KB cluster, then that file is going to take up 32KB of disk space.
Now disks, including clusters, can go bad. CHKDSK (short for CHeckDiSK), is a Windows utility program that examines disk space and disk use for the Windows file system. CHKDSK provides information specific to each file system in a status report that you will see after you run it. The status report shows errors found in the file system. When run without any parameters, CHKDSK only reports the current status of the file system and does not fix anything.
A final note - if CHKDSK does find some physical errors on your drive, even though it will tell the file system to avoid them, you should be thinking about a new drive - it's a sign that the drive's best days may be over, and there's trouble ahead.
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