Re: Need disk error checker for Windows XP

"Mike Easter" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
news:[email protected]...
> 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
>

I would say that Ontrack software is another good, but expensive, 
alternative.

Chris