It is a good idea to know the state of health of your hard disks. If you have alot of important data, you wouldn’t want your drive to fail unexpectedly (even though you do have backups right?).

You can use a variety of automated tools to check things like disk errors, but in Windows Vista it is pretty easy to do a quick manual check of your drive(s).

  • Select Start -> “Computer”
  • Right click on the drive you wish to check
  • Select “Properties”
  • Click on the “Tools” tab
  • Click the “Check Now” button
  • Check both of the options: Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attemtp recovery of bad sectors
  • Click “Start”

Check Vista Disk Errors

You may not be able to check a disk that is in use. That is no problem, you will be given the option to schedule a disk check. This can be done on next bootup etc.

Scanning can take a bit of time, depending on disk size and the amount of data on there. So be patient!