Performance and reliability are top most concerns with computer hard drives. A corrupt hard drive not only loses its data access speed, but can also result in complete data loss. Therefore, before your hard drive results in data loss and shows the blue, black, or blank screen of death, we suggest that you try out some efficient methods to repair data corruption before going for the last option, i.e. re-installation of the Operating System (OS).
The Windows OS itself has some reliable measures that are able to fix various corruption issues that occur in its hard drive. These measures generally repair corrupt or missing system files and attempt to perform recovery from bad sectors, if found during the scanning process. Mentioned below are two of the most useful and frequently used methods of repairing error-prone or corrupt Windows files system:
Windows Error-Checking Tool
This is an inbuilt Windows tool that is used for checking a hard drive for errors and bad sectors and subsequently repairing it. This tool replaces the older ‘CHKDSK’ and ‘SCANDISK’ error checking features. Mentioned below are the steps to use it:
- First of all, close all activities or software programs that are running on your computer.
- Go to ‘Start’ and click ‘Computer’ (if you are Windows XP user, then ‘My Computer’).
- Right click on the drive that is corresponding to your primary partition (generally it is ‘C’ drive of your Windows system) and select ‘Properties’ from the menu items.
- Go to ‘Tools’ tab and click ‘Check Now…’ button situated under ‘Error-checking’. Provide the confirmation or administrator password that is asked for.
- Select ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ checkbox for repairing file system errors automatically as the OS detects them.
- Select ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’ checkbox. This option will scan the bad sectors and prevent your hard drive from using them. With the high usefulness of this feature, it may extend the scanning time up to few hours.
- Click ‘Start’ to start the process. However, if you are asked to reschedule the scanning process, then restart your computer to initialize it.
Windows System File Checker
Another useful utility in Microsoft Windows based systems is the ‘System File Checker’ or SFC. This utility scans all system files for errors and replaces their corrupt or incorrect versions with the correct ones. This feature is very useful especially when your computer is running erratically or displaying file system errors. Follow below mentioned steps to run this utility:
- Close all the open programs of your hard drive.
- Go to ‘Start’ button.
- Click ‘Run’.
- In the ‘Run’ box, type the following command ‘SFC/SCANNOW’.
- Click ‘OK’.
After completion of the scanning and repairing process, the run window will close automatically.
Note that both the above-mentioned processes to fix hard drive corruption may take a few minutes to a couple of hours to complete. However, it is also recommended that you backup your data before you begin the process. Indeed, data backup plays a vital role as you can restore any lost files and folders from it very easily.