All versions of Windows come with a useful disk checking feature which can check the integrity of your hard disk, fix file system errors and scan for bad sectors. In this tutorial we’ll show you 3 ways to run disk error check in Windows 10, 8 and 7.

Method 1: Run Disk Check from Windows Explorer

1. Open Windows Explorer. Right-click on the drive you want to run the disk check on, and choose Properties.

   

2. Select the Tools tab. Under the “Error checking” section, click on the Check button.

   

3. Click on Scan drive button to run the disk check.

   

   If your selected drive is a system partition that is being used, Windows will let you schedule a disk check on the next restart.

Method 2: Run Disk Check Using the Chkdsk Command Line

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt.

   • In Windows 10/8, simply press the Windows key + X and select “Command Prompt (Admin)“.
   • In Windows 7, click on Start, navigate to Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
2. You can run the chkdsk command to run the disk check. Replace C: with the letter of the drive you’d like to run a disk check.

   chkdsk /f /r C:

   

   The /f flag tells windows to fix any issues and the /r flag tells it to do a deep scan. It locates bad sectors and recovers whatever information is readable.

Method 3: Run Disk Check By Setting The Dirty Bit

Sometimes if your PC is not properly shut down or crashed, a dirty flag is set on the disk to force disk check to be run at the next reboot. Here is a simple way to set a dirty bit for your drive manually:

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt.
2. Type the following command and press Enter. Replace C: with the letter of the drive you want to set as dirty.
   fsutil.exe dirty set C:

   

3. Reboot your computer and Windows will force a disk check on your specified drive.

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