How to Run CHKDSK to Diagnose and Fix Disk Problems on Windows

It’s probably not too far-fetched to say that most of us don’t check the health of our hard drives regularly. If everything’s running smoothly, it’s easy to forget. As a result, problems like bad sectors, lost clusters, and directory errors can unknowingly build up in the background and cause data loss or system instability.

What Is CHKDSK?

CheckDisk (CHKDSK) is a command-line utility tool that was introduced in 1980 with 86-DOS, which would later become MS-DOS. Windows CHKDSK can be used to scan and repair problems with the file system of your storage device. You can use the CHKDSK command with terminal programs such as Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, and Terminal.

What CHKDSK Does

The functionality you get out of the CHKDSK utility is dependent on the parameters you use. On its own, the Check Disk command will only scan your disks for errors and report them back to you. However, when used with , one of the more popularly used parameters, CHKDSK will also scan the drive for bad sectors and attempt to correct them in addition to the other errors it finds.

How it handles the bad sector depends on whether it’s a soft bad sector or a hard bad sector:

• Soft bad sector – Appears when data is written incorrectly. CHKDSK will repair these bad sectors.
• Hard bad sector – Appears as a result of physical damage. CHKDSK will mark these sectors as unusable so they’re not used again.

Since it’s scanning the file system, it works on hard drives, solid-state drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, and most other forms of storage media. Although, some parameters are limited to certain file systems (which we’ll look at later).

How to Run CHKDSK on Windows

There are a few ways you can run CHKDSK on Windows 10 and 11 to fix file system-related errors. Check out the various methods below.

Method 1: Run CHKDSK Using Command Prompt

Running the CHKDSK command using Command Prompt (or another terminal application) gives you the most control over the scan. With the use of parameters, you can customize what actions the scan performs.

Here is a CHKDSK command list, with a description for each parameter:

This is how you run CHKDSK using Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Terminal on Windows 11:

1. Right-click Start and click Terminal (Admin). On Windows 10, click Windows PowerShell (Admin) instead.
2. Type chkdsk *: /r. Replace * with your own drive letter. The /r parameter will instruct CHKDSK to find errors, as well as bad sectors, and fix them. Press Enter.

Method 2: Repair Storage Using Error Checking Tool

Ever used the disk error checking feature on your hard drive? If you have, you may be surprised to know that it’s actually just the CHKDSK repair command with a user interface. It’s meant to be a simplified way of utilizing the functions of CHKDSK without the difficulties of using it in a terminal window. While this is great, the downside (for some) is that you don’t get the same amount of control over your scan, as you cannot specify parameters. It will simply scan your drive for errors and attempt to correct them.

Here’s how you can access the disk error checking tool:

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Right-click your hard drive and click Properties.
3. Click Tools.
4. Click Check.
5. Click Scan and repair drive.

Method 3: Run CHKDSK from WinRE

When your system drive is the one that’s facing problems, the previous methods won’t work since you can’t get into Windows. Even in times like this, CHKDSK can be used to fix the problem. To use this method, you’ll need your Windows installation media. This allows you to boot into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and make use of CHKDSK.

This is how you can run CHKDSK in WinRE to troubleshoot your system drive:

1. Boot into WinRE.
2. Select your language and click Next.
3. Click Repair your computer.
4. Click Troubleshoot.
5. Click Command Prompt.
6. Type chkdsk *: /r. Replace * with your drive letter. Press Enter.

How to Access CHKDSK Logs

You can extract logs from CHKDSK to go back and look exactly at what you did to fix the problem. Log extraction can be done in two ways: Event Viewer or PowerShell.

Event Viewer

1. Press Windows Key + R and type eventvwr.msc. Press Enter to open Event Viewer.
2. Expand Windows Logs and right-click Application. Click Filter Current Log.
3. Select Chkdsk and Wininit from the Event sources dropdown. Click OK.
4. Click Save Filtered Log File As and name the exported file.

PowerShell

1. Right-click Windows and open Terminal. On Windows 10, click Windows PowerShell (Admin).
2. Type the following command and replace <pathandname> with your own output location and filename (e.g. C:\Users\Jordan\Documents\chkdisk-export.txt).

   get-winevent -FilterHashTable @{logname="Application"} | ?{$_.providername -match "chkdsk"} | fl timecreated, message | out-file "<pathandname>"

   

3. Navigate to the output folder and open the log.

Can You Recover Lost Files Using CHKDSK?

CHKDSK is popularly mistaken as a means of data recovery. This misconception likely stems from the official CHKDSK documentation that states the /r parameter “locates bad sectors and recovers readable information”. However, this does not mean that it recovers your data. Rather, it’s referring to data on soft bad sectors that it finds and relocates to a working sector.

Running CHKDSK in hopes that it will recover your data is unwise, as it may end up doing the opposite. The CHKDSK command may cause your data to become corrupted, causing it to become even more challenging to recover (and in some cases, impossible).

FAQ

Conclusion

CHKDSK is one of the most useful diagnostic tools when it comes to fixing problems with your hard drive. It’s used to check your volume’s file system and file system metadata for logical and physical errors. With the use of parameters, it can also fix them.

You can run CHKDSK through a terminal application, like Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, and Terminal. If you want to use a graphical user interface, you can access the Error checking tool in your drive’s properties which utilizes CHKDSK.

If your hard drive contains data that you need, we recommend performing data recovery before running CHKDSK to ensure none of your data is lost, as CHKDSK can render some of your data unrecoverable when it’s in such a delicate state.