Microsoft ScanDisk

Microsoft ScanDisk

A component of Microsoft Windows
300px Text-based version of Microsoft ScanDisk running on Windows 98
Details
Other names	ScanDisk
Type	Utility software
Included with	MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 9x
Related components
CHKDSK

External images
Graphical version of ScanDisk on Windows 98
ScanDisk prompt when it finds an error
ScanDisk Surface Scan Options dialog box
ScanDisk Advanced Options dialog box

Microsoft ScanDisk (also called ScanDisk), is a diagnostic utility included in MS-DOS and Windows 9x. It checks and repairs file systems errors on a disk drive. It was first introduced in MS-DOS 6.2 and succeeded its simpler predecessor, CHKDSK.

ScanDisk included a more user-friendly interface than CHKDSK, more configuration options, and the ability to detect and (if possible) recover from physical errors on the disk. This replaced and improved upon the limited ability offered by the MS-DOS Recover utility. Unlike CHKDSK, ScanDisk would also repair crosslinked files.

In Windows 95 onwards, ScanDisk also had a graphical user interface, although the text-based user interface continued to be available for use in single-tasking ("DOS") mode.

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.

See also

• CHKDSK
• fsck