Equivalent of Scandisk on XP?

Ok, say you had your system turn off, for whatever reason, (hard reset, power failure, etc). Back in Win9x days scandisk would run before windows loaded and would find lost data. Usualy this was jsut temp files and you'd delete instead of saving it, but sometimes files would report the size inccorectly etc and it'd fix that too...

XP doesn't do this. So what do you use to check the files on your PC after such an event? Does check disk do this? But it does a low level scan though and takes a LONG time...

In my experience, WinXP Pro /does/ run chkdsk on reboot if there was a problem.

However, if it does not, go to My Computer, right click on the drive, and click properties. Now click on "tools", and the top tool should be "Error Checking". Click "Check Now". It will most likely tell you that it cannot check the drive now, and ask if you want the drive check to be scheduled at the next boot. Click "Yes", and reboot.

Jim

I've also found that Win XP Pro and XP Home Edition run chkdsk upon bootup and fix any problems that resulted form the improper shut down.

Yes, but I'd like to not run chkdsk as I don't need to check every sector, I just want to fix the filesystem/lost data etc. chkdsk takes FOREVER!!!

oh and XP has never done it automatically when my PC has just "shut off" improperly...

That's because you use NTFS.

The reason you should shut down properly is because of "delayed writes". Data is often cached in memory and doesn't get written to disk until later.

A proper shutdown will write the cached data. An improper shutdown can leave the file system corrupted. The next time the OS boots, it knows if the shutdown was proper. If not, it has to repair the damage.

With the FAT file system, it has to scan the whole disk. NTFS keeps a log, they call it a journal, of all operations, so on bootup after an improper shutdown it only has to check the last few entries. It happens so fast you don't notice it.

You may also notice you don't get those "file001.chk" files when you use NTFS. At least I never do.

Ah, Ok. Thanks for clearing that up. I was wondering if it was because of NTFS.

So I guess I don't have to really worry about it then. Unless I feel like running chkdsk once ever so often. Cool.

NTFS got journaling around 2000. I think Linux got it about the same time.

I have the OS check my disks before I defrag. I gusss the defraggers do this too, but I don't want to take a chance.

I also run a hard drive diagnostic at least once a month. These things always give me advanced notice that my drive is about to die long before the OS sees anything wrong.

Western Digital has one that runs under the OS like a normal program called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows. They say it's only for WD drives, but they are wrong.

Lately I've been using Seagate's online diagnostic. It uses the browser and the first time you run it, it will install an activeX control.