SCANDISK

SCANDISK operating in text mode on a Windows 98 system.

SCANDISK or ScanDisk is a utility in MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows systems which checks and repairs file systems and bad clusters on the hard drive. It was introduced in MS-DOS version 6.2. Previous versions of MS-DOS supplied only the simpler, purely text-based program CHKDSK.

ScanDisk included a more user-friendly interface than MS-DOS CHKDSK, more command-line and other configuration options,^[1][2] and the ability to detect and sometimes recover from physical errors on the disk.^[3] Unlike CHKDSK, ScanDisk would also repair crosslinked files.^[4]

In Windows 95 onwards, SCANDISK also had a graphical user interface, although the text interface continued to be available for use in single-tasking ("DOS") mode.^[5][6]

However, SCANDISK cannot check NTFS disk drives, and therefore it is unavailable for computers that may be running NT based (including Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc.) versions of Windows; for the purpose, a newer CHKDSK is provided instead--this is not to be confused with the older MS-DOS CHKDSK.

On Unix-like systems there are tools like "fsck_msdosfs" to do the same task.^[7]

See also

• fsck
• CHKDSK
• FAT
• FAT16
• FAT32

References

1. ^ ScanDisk command-line options
2. ^ MS-DOS 6.2 SCANDISK.INI
3. ^ This replaced and improved upon the limited ability offered by the MS-DOS Recover utility.
4. ^ How to repair crosslinked files with CHKDSK notes that users with MS-DOS 6.2 or later should use Scandisk to repair the errors.
5. ^ Windows 95 Documentation
6. ^ Description of Scandisk for Windows from the Windows 98/Me documentation.
7. ^ "fsck_msdosfs". http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=fsck_msdosfs&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7.2-RELEASE&format=html.  091108 freebsd.org

External links

• Description of ScanDisk for Windows (Scandskw.exe) in Windows 98/Me – Microsoft TechNet article