Maintaining Drive Integrity
ScanDisk can be used to maintain the integrity of hard disks drives, floppy drives, RAM drives, and some memory cards. It inspects the file system on these devices and can fix problems while the system is in use. ScanDisk is available in both a command-line version and one that operates within the Windows GUI. It works with compressed drives set up using DoubleSpace and DriveSpace. It can inspect the physical surface of the drive for bad sectors; inspect the file structure, compression structure, and volume signatures of any compressed drives; locate and repair crossed-linked files and lost clusters; verify the integrity of FAT16 and FAT32 file systems; and verify and repair problems with the directory tree structure of a drive. ScanDisk operates in two modes: standard and thorough. In standard mode, Scandisk performs a check of both files and folders while in thorough mode it inspects the integrity of the disk drive's physical surface in addition to checking the files and folders. You can also set ScanDisk to run automatically and fix errors or to prompt you before making any corrections.
Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP have a similar tool that is accessed in the PROPERTIES dialog box for a disk drive. Open the TOOLS tab and select the ERROR-CHECKING option. Click OK to start the program if the disk is not shared and in use. If the disk is shared and in use, the program will be set to run automatically the next time the computer is