Running a disc check?

Marscaleb said:

I have a laptop that I suspect has something wrong with its hard drive, so I went to run the disc check.
Last time I did this, I could have sworn the process was: select the disc, right click and select properties, go to tools, select the disc check thing, and since it is the same drive windows runs on it will schedule it to run the next time you reboot. Reboot, scan starts, go away for two hours, come back, find windows is running, get extremely frustrated because nothing ever told you the result of the scan.

But yet when I got the the "tools" part, the "check disc for errors" function comes up with a window that tells me that I don't need to check this drive, but I can if I want to, and windows will keep running while it scans the disc.
I run this scan, and it later gives me a window that says I have no errors.

Now something is amiss here. I had also just tried to make an image copy of my hard drive, and THAT program told me there were bad clusters on the drive. (I tried to confirm by simply running the defrag tool, but it wouldn't show me a bar representing my data anymore.)
So I can't seem to trust this disc check. Where do I find the classic one that can't run while windows is running? How can I get a trustworthy tool that will actually check if my disc has bad sectors?

Open a command prompt as admin.
Run this command, substituting the drive letter of the drive you want to check for... X

chkdsk X: /r


If you are checking the drive that Windows is installed on... you won't be able to use your computer until it's finished. It will ask if you want to run chkdsk the next time the computer boots. Answer YES and Reboot.

If the drive you are checking is NOT the Windows drive, then chkdsk CAN run while you're using Windows.

/f = Fixes errors
/r = Recovers data from bad sectors AND Fixes errors.



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To open a command prompt as admin, navigate to: C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe ...and right click cmd.exe and choose: Run as Administrator


OR... type: cmd in the Taskbar search box, and click Run as Administrator (as shown)...

Marscaleb said:

It's running, finally.
How do I see the results when it is finished? I want to know how much of my disc is usable; this will shape the future of how I use this device.

It'll pop up a report when it's finished. If you're not there to see it... you can bring up the results from within Windows.

Just open Settings > Windows Power Shell and copy/paste this command, then hit enter.

get-winevent -FilterHashTable @{logname="Application"; id="1001"}| ?{$_.providername –match "wininit"} | fl timecreated, message


Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10

Hi, that's not really a disk check. It's a check on a limited part of your disk.

To check the integrity of the whole disk, use a 3rd party tool.
Hard Disk Sentinel is excellent- instant results on its GUI- very useful appraisal. Green is good. Full functional trial.

Simple free SMART check- Crystal Diskinfo (free).

Want to scan with chkdsk and get results on the screen?
From an admin command prompt run
chkdsk c: /scan

- scans only, no fix, but means you don't have to research how to get the results.

I want to know how much of my disc is usable

If you're thinking of using a partly failing disk in the hope of avoiding defective parts- well, that's built in to the way disks work anyway - to a limited extent. E.g. hard disks are made with extra capacity. Defective sectors are routinely swapped out by the firmware in the disk. When there are no more spare ones- your disk is failing and needs to be replaced.

Note: you can get early automatic warning of this by leaving e.g. Crystal Diskinfo running, set to alert you to your disk failing.

Further, if you routinely use disk imaging as is endlessly recommended here, the very act of creating the image (at least with Macrium Reflect, apparently not with Acronis TI) detects any error in the data being imaged. A sudden failure like that led to me finding my disk was starting to fail.

Marscaleb said:

So last night when I ran CHKDSK I got messages about it finding and attempting to correct problems.
Today When I ran windows again I was unable to find any results from chkdsk in the event viewer; there were absolutely no logs for it in there.

Getting very frustrated.
I mean, it's an old laptop and I don't use it that much, but I would like to keep it to run old games at gaming events. I'd be willing to replace the hard drive to keep it running well, but finding drivers for everything is proving to be a fool's errand. So at this point, really I'm just trying to gauge how reliable it is. But apparently my computer has schizophrenia and can't even tell me that I've checked for errors.

Well I guess maybe that IS my answer. The HDD is screwed up so bad it can't even save the logs from chkdsk.

You have to hit the ENTER key after you copy/paste that command.
I know it doesn't look like it... but I just tested it again.

It works on both PowerShell and PowerShell (Admin).

Right click the START button and choose: Windows PowerShell
Then paste that command... then hit the ENTER key, to run the command.


get-winevent -FilterHashTable @{logname="Application"; id="1001"}| ?{$_.providername –match "wininit"} | fl timecreated, message


Well thank you for your- er - reply.

To determine the state of your disk- forget chkdsk right now- get a copy of
Hard Disk Sentinel (portable) - you can run that without installation even from a flash drive.

Download Hard Disk Sentinel

Green is good.


Note: I told you how to run chkdsk without needing to struggle to get the results. Did you read that?

There are ways to help yourself not to get into this sort of mess. Just ask.
Presently it looks like you're heading for a new disk and a clean install.