Recycle your Computers & Technology with us.

Get the skillz needed to clean up your hard disk with ScanDisk!

Posted By : Michal of Data Doctors on March 3, 2004

Follow us on Facebook   Follow us on Twitter   Follow us on LinkedIn

Let Data Doctors be your personal IT department today

Clean up your hard disk drive with ScanDisk!

This question was answered on March 3, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Through normal use of your computer, the hard drive becomes cluttered & a bit messy Folders can become cross-linked, file names can contain invalid or unknown characters or become damaged, and file names can become disassociated with their files ScanDisk can fix these and other problems with little to no work from you We recommend running ScanDisk on a regular basis.

Follow the steps below depending on your OS:

Windows 98 & Me:

1 Click the 'Start' button

2 Point to 'Programs', point to 'Accessories', then to 'System Tools', and click on 'ScanDisk'

3 Click the drive you want to scan

4 Select either the 'Standard' or 'Thorough' test

5 Click 'Start'

Windows XP & 2000

Windows XP & 2000 both have a utility called the Error-Checking tool that is used in place of the ScanDisk tool This basically does the same procedures such as checking the integrity of your hard disk by checking for file system errors and bad sectors

1 Double-click 'My Computer'

2 Right-click on the local disk that you want to check

3 Click 'Properties'

4 Select the 'Tools' tab

4 Under Error-checking select Check Now

5 Select the 'Automatically fix file system errors' check box

5 Select the 'Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' check box

6 Click Start

The Standard test checks the files and folders on the selected drives for errors The Thorough test will give you further options It performs the Standard test plus checks your hard disk drive for physical damage You can even specify to scan areas of your disk containing only data files, or just the areas with system files, or both Both Standard and Thorough have a set of Advanced options that help you to deal with lost file fragments, invalid files, and files that overlap the same disk space

About the author

Posted by Michal of Data Doctors on March 3, 2004

Need Help with this Issue?

We help people with technology! It's what we do.
Contact or Schedule an Appointment with a location for help!