Re: Need disk error checker for Windows XP

D-W-S wrote:
> Borgholio wrote on Mon, 27 Mar 2006 01:54:12 -0800:
>
>> SpinRite looks good, but it's
>> terribly expensive.
>
> A new disk is probably cheaper than $90...

I'm not a spinrite salesman, but people use spinrite to check out their
new drives.  And for preventive maintenance.

There's a lot of information at the site.  Here's a par comparing with
scandisk

// How does SpinRite compare to ScanDisk?

SpinRite and ScanDisk are entirely different types of products. ScanDisk
replaces the original DOS CHKDSK command, which verified the logical
file system structure of the hard drive (the newer CHKDSK command no
longer performs that function). Microsoft created ScanDisk because
people were switching off their computers without first exiting Windows.
This resulted in corruption of the file system.

ScanDisk can also perform a read-only "scan" of a drive's surface to
check for any unreadable sectors which it will then remove from use by
the file system. However, ScanDisk does not perform data recovery,
maintenance, or surface analysis of any kind. Unlike SpinRite, it does
no data pattern testing, defect scrubbing, data relocation or unreadable
sector repair and recovery. ScanDisk was never designed to perform those
functions.

If your hard drives are acting up, the best thing to do is to run
SpinRite first (a quick scan at level 2 is fine) to check for and repair
any obvious read-trouble on the drive. Then, knowing that the
"lower-levels" of the drive are okay, run ScanDisk to check and verify
the "higher-levels" of the drive's file system. SpinRite is the best and
only tool for long-term low-level data integrity maintenance, and
ScanDisk is a useful free tool for checking the operating system's file
system at a higher level. //


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin