Craig said:
I am wondering when and how often I should chkdsk.
WinXP Pro does not provide scheduling for automatic chkdsking.
Is there a way to do so?
Shenan said:
CHKDSK?
Depends on how worried you are about the drive going bad and how
frequent your backups are - etc.
I would always CHKDSK before you DEFRAG.
I set both defrag (a third party program) and Norton Antivirus Full
System Scan every Saturday midnight.
But I hardly did chkds because I could not figure out how to
schedule for routine scanning.
The only way I know of to "schedule" a CHKDSK is to set the "dirty bit" and
then schedule a reboot of your machine sometime afterward. Then it will
CHKDSK on reboot. There may be a way to schedule it otherwise - but I have
always found the CHKDSK at reboot to be more reliable - and is usually the
only way to check your system disk anyway.
Personally - I think you may be defragmenting the drive(s) unnecessarily -
if you do it weekly - it is highly unlikely you are seeing any benefit to
it. Although prevention is great - messing with how the data is laid out on
your hard disk drive often is not something I would recommend. I would only
defragment when ever you need to - and usually an analyzing of the drive
will tell you this.
As for CHKDSK - again - same idea. If you analyze and it says the volume
should be defragmented - then reboot/CHKDSK and then defragment. Unless you
super-utilize the drive, this should be more than sufficient - and by that i
mean you would have to be removing and adding data to that drive by the
gigabytes on a constant basis. But messing with the layout of the data on
your hard disk drive once a week - it just seems like a bad idea. Nothing
may ever become of it - but then again - hard drives and the electronic bits
that make up your data is quite sensitive.
