ScanDisk

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

SCANDISK operating in text mode on a Windows 98 system.

SCANDISK or ScanDisk is a utility in MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows systems which checks and repairs file systems and bad clusters on the hard drive. It was introduced in MS-DOS version 6.2. Previous versions of MS-DOS supplied only the simpler, purely text-based program CHKDSK. In Windows 95 onwards, SCANDISK also had a graphical user interface, although the DOS program retained the TUI. The disk scanning utility under Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP is also called CHKDSK (even though it is different from the MS-DOS CHKDSK) and has the ability to check NTFS disk drives. From Windows 2000 and on, it is integrated in Disk Properties as "error-checking".

Criticism

File system checking programs are designed to repair faulty file systems. However, other types of errors can occur in the file system, which may cause these programs to run automatically. However, since the original problem is not of the type these programs can handle^[vague], they may cause even bigger problems, making data recovery much harder. Windows XP and Windows 2000 may start these programs without first asking and then 'repair' any errors they find without asking. For this reason, data recovery experts usually advise customers to stop these programs before they can do any damage by hitting 'ESC' (for which one has 10 seconds), or to even disable them completely. [1]

Praise

Even though this piece of software is of an extreme "bare-bone" nature, and has a minute amount of user interaction; this MS-DOS tool is still used and recommended as being a sure hit for computer up-keep and maintenance.

See also

• fsck

References

• Description of ScanDisk for Windows (Scandskw.exe) in Windows 98/Me – Microsoft TechNet article