System Tweaking Guide - Scandisk - By Mark "Frugal" Bush
Scandisk is a utility
that checks your hard drive for errors. It can also fix many
of the errors it finds. Due to the nature of the media errors
can occur frequently on your hard drive. any time for instance,
that a program, or Windows itself crashes while writing to the
drive it is likely to leave errors. There are 2 types of scan
that you can do.
Standard: Checks the files and folders on the selected drive
for errors.
Thourough: Does the same but also checks the physical integrity
of the hard drives surface.
It is good houskeeping to do a Standard Scandisk weekly and
a Thorough Scandisk monthly. This will keep your drive in tip
top condition and minimise the chance of data loss.
In order to do a Scandick click on "Start" Select "Run" type
"scandisk" without the quotes. Select the drive then select
either Standard or Thorough. Tick the box "Automatically
Fix Errors". Before we click on start lets look at the
advanced options. Click on "Advanced" and you will
see the following check boxes:
Display Summary:
When Scandisk finishes it wil display a summary based on this
setting
Log File:
Unless No Log is selected scandisk will log the entire session
to a file called scandisk.log in the root of the C: drive. You
can choose to replace the log with a new one for each scandisk
or you can append each new session to the end of the old log
(Appending will make the log grow very big very fast if you
are doing weekly scans). You can view the log in any text editor.
Cross-Linked Files:
A cross-link occurs when two or more files use the same cluster
(area of a disk) at the same time. If you try to use or delete
any cross-linked files, the data in them may become further
damaged or your program may stop. You can choose to Delete the
cross linked files, ignore it and leave the files alone or Make
copies. If you select the latter Scandisk will make a separate
copy of each cross-linked cluster and copy it to each affected
file. The data in a cross-linked cluster is probably correct
for only one of the cross-linked files, but may not be correct
for any of them.
Lost File Fragments:
Lost file fragments may contain useful data but are more often
just leftovers that are taking up space. If you choose free
then Scandisk will remove them and free up the space. If you
convert them to files Scandisk saves them to the root of C:
as chk.000 chk.001 etc. You can view these files in either a
text or Hex editor. Personally I've never found one that contained
any useful data but i always prefer to know what I am deleting.
Check Files For:
Invalid file names, you may not be able to open files with invalid
names. Invalid Dates andTtimes. Files whose dates are invalid
may not be sorted correctly. If a file's date is incorrect,
some programs, such as backup, setup, or copy programs, may
not recognize how current a file is. I don't reccommend checking
for duplicate names as you are likely to have several files
that legitamately have the same file names and this option can
slow the scan down considerably on a large drive.
Check Host Drive First:
If you have a drive that was compressed by using DoubleSpace
or DriveSpace, ScanDisk checks the uncompressed drive on which
the compressed drive is stored before checking the compressed
drive itself. This uncompressed drive, called a host drive,
may be hidden. Errors on a compressed drive are often caused
by errors on its host drive.
Report MS-DOS Mode Name Length Errors:
Although Windows supports long file names, MSDOS does not. A
copy of the filenames in dos mode is stored in the format progra~1
in place of progrm files or micros~1 in place of microsoft office.
If there are errors in the MSDOS name length you may be unable
to view these files in Dos.
When you do a Thorough Scandisk you also have access to further
options. Once you select Thorough the options button will become
active. Click on it and you will be presented with the folowing
options.
Areas Of The DiskTto Scan:
System and data areas checks your entire disk for physical damage,
including both its system and data areas. System area only checks
only the system area of your disk for physical damage. Errors
in the system area may indicate that your disk needs to be replaced.
ScanDisk usually cannot repair errors in the system area. Data
area only checks only the data area of your disk for physical
damage. ScanDisk can usually repair errors in the data area
by relocating data to a valid area of the disk and marking the
bad area so that programs won't store data there in the future.
However, the data stored in a damaged area of your disk may
be unrecoverable.
Do Not Perform Write Testing:
If selected ScanDisk reads the contents of each sector of your
disk but does not write it back. Otherwise ScanDisk reads the
contents of each sector and then writes the contents back to
verify that the disk can be read from and written to correctly.
Do Not Repair Bad Sectors In Hidden And System Files:
ScanDisk repairs bad sectors by moving the data they contain
to a valid location. If this check box is selected, ScanDisk
will not move data that is part of a hidden or system file.
Otherwise ScanDisk will move the data. If ScanDisk moves data
that is part of a hidden or system file, programs that require
their files to be stored in a specific location on your disk
may not work correctly. Some older programs use the location
of a hidden system file to verify that you are using an authorized
copy.
Both of the images contain my settings which are those that
I reccommend. Once you have chosen the options that you want
just click on Start and away you go. At this stage you are probably
thinking "Well this is all very nice, but how does this
relate to games or sims?" Well when you lose your saved
Campaign because you couldn't be bothered to Scandisk then you'll
know how it relates to sims :o)
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