DOS Chkdsk

DOS Chkdsk

An external command that looks for lost clusters on the hard disk. It also reports free memory and disk space. To run it, type:

         chkdsk

Improperly closed files, caused by rebooting from a frozen application for example, generate lost clusters, which are unidentifiable files. Most of the time, these are temporary files not worth recovering. To reclaim these lost clusters, run Chkdsk with the /f switch. When you are asked "Convert lost chains to files?", answering Y for yes will convert lost clusters to FILE0000.CHK files, which you can examine. Answering N will remove them. For example:

         chkdsk /f

To list recovered files, type:

         dir *.chk

Important!
Do not go to the DOS prompt (shell out) from within Windows or any other program and then run the Chkdsk utility. You may get invalid results and possibly destroy data. See also DOS ScanDisk.