After a certain period of use, hard drives eventually fill up with data and start overflowing with fragmented and temporary files.
Light: Windows 10 defragmentation process
Due to such storage, your hard drive may have problems and work inefficiently if you haven't defragmented it for a long time or if you haven't organized it regularly.
Fortunately, Windows offers a native utility that can help you check different hard drives for errors and failures and fix them automatically. It is called Check Disk Utility or chkdsk.exe.
The Check Disk utility is a very useful feature of Windows, it is programmed to run automatically in the event of a crash or to run scheduled checks in the background to ensure the proper functioning of your operating system.
Windows allows you to run the tool through different methods, now I will show you the two main ways through which you can run Check Disk Utility to fix your hard drive errors and bad behavior.
A- Run the Check Disk utility from this PC
Microsoft has replaced My Computer with This PC, in its latest version of Windows, although most of the functions remain the same and in the same places.
To run the Check Disk utility,
1- Open this PC.
2- Right-click the drive you want to check for errors and select Properties.
3- Once the window is open, search for the file tools tab above and click on it.
4- In the Check for error option, click Check.
5- A window will appear indicating the status of the selected unit, according to the controls previously programmed by Windows.
6- You can still check for errors, even if it is in good condition according to your system. Just select the option that says Scan Drive in the window.
7- Windows will now look for errors on the selected drive. Be patient and wait for the process to finish.
8- Once the operation is complete, Windows will show you a pop-up window, indicating the same.
9- In the same window, click on Show details to view the scan results.
Now, view the detailed analysis result by scrolling the result window as shown.
Solution: Check the hard drive for errors using the command prompt
Like any other utility / tool / program, the Check Disk utility can also be run via the command prompt.
Follow the steps to start the disk check utility using command prompt.
1- Click the Start button.
2- Click on the search bar and search for the command prompt.
3- Select Command Prompt from the results to open it.
4- Once the command prompt is open, type the following command:
CHKDSK C:/F
where C: is the drive to check for errors, I used C: as an example, you can replace it with the designated hard drive letter, which you want to check for errors.
Note: This command corrects disk errors.
Below is the complete list of commands for chkdsk
C:>chkdsk /? Checks a disk and displays a status report. CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]] [/B] volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name. filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for fragmentation. /F Fixes errors on the disk. /V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every file on the disk. On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any. /R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /F). /L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified number of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current size. /X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid (implies /F). /I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index entries. /C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder structure. /B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume (implies /R) The /I or /C switch reduces the amount of time required to run Chkdsk by skipping certain checks of the volume.
5- Be patient and wait for Windows to finish checking your hard drive for errors.
6- You can see the results in the Event Viewer.
a) Use the combination, Windows key + Q for
open the search bar.
b) Find Event Viewer and click on it
when it appears in the results.
c) When the window opens, search
The Windows logs in the left pane of the file
window.
d) Double click on it and select Application
from below him.
e) Now click on Filter Content Record in the file
right pane of the window after selection
Application in the Windows logs.
f) A new window will open, just type
Chkdsk in the Event ID option of
window and click OK.
g) You will now see the results of your scan.
This way you can check for errors in your faulty and problematic hard drives and fix them using the Windows Chkdsk utility 🙂
