check disk on an external harddrive

[Stern]

Hi all. I recently dropped my 50 GB portable harddrive by accident and I wanted to check it for errors. I plugged it into my PC (WinXP Pro SP2), right-clicked on the harddrive, went to Properties -> Tools -> Check Now. I then ticked the box beside "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" and left it for a while. The scan finished and I got a little window saying "Disk Check Complete." with an OK button in it.

This is great! However, I have no idea if it found errors, it just said it finished, so what I'd like to know is if it saved some sort of log of the scan anywhere. What I specifically want to know is if there were bad sectors.

If it doesn't leave a log, could someone point me at a program that does?

Thanks!

Stern

 

[Nothinman]

Run chkdsk from the command line. I don't know where, if anywhere, the GUI wrapper around it would store the log.

 

[Stern]

Does the "chkdsk" command do the whole surface checking? Or do I need to add options? Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

By default it won't but it can, just run 'chkdsk /?' for a list of options.

 

[Stern]

thanks mate 96 KB of bad sectors. new harddrive time

 

[Scarpozzi]

Originally posted by: Stern
thanks mate 96 KB of bad sectors. new harddrive time

Umm...you know that hard drive build in swap sectors (I'm sure the manufacturers have better terminolgy).

You're probably fine. When you run chkdisk, it marks the bad sectors and sets them aside so they're not used anymore.....that's why you run it. (it also verifies your MBR and MTF sizes with the disk cylinders)

 

[Nothinman]

Umm...you know that hard drive build in swap sectors (I'm sure the manufacturers have better terminolgy).

And if it gets to the point where bad sectors are reported back to the rest of the system then all of those were used up and the number reported is in addition to them.

 

[Stern]

Well I'm getting I/O errors on it now, according to windoze, so I think its a bit broke... tbh