Scandisk doesn't find any inconsisitencies that defragment says are the in the file system.....any ideas? ?

Question

Scandisk doesn't find any inconsisitencies that defragment says are the in the file system.....any ideas? ?

Answer 1

I think that two diagnostic programmes will never give exactly the same result, what one programme is configured to scan the other might not have as a priority and if it doesn't affect the performance of your pc why get ocd about it?

Answer 2

I believe it could be one of several different reasons.

First, either your computers scandisk is corrupted and not working properly (I highly doubt this because the program is not used a heck of a lot)

Second, your defragment program is corrupted, which is more likely than scandisk being corrupted.

Third, you could have some sort of malicious infection on your computer that has defragment notice disk errors, and scandisk not detect those errors.

Basically, I think I would believe scandisk over defragment.  But, I will remind you that this is my own opinion, and should not be trusted 100%.

You should ask yourself how old your hard drive is?  Sometimes they start to break down for no apparent reason.  One thing you might try is to get a new hard drive, and install it as a secondary drive (slave drive).  Then, simply install your OS on the new hard drive, and then do a defragment of the original hard drive and see if the new OS detects inconsistancies, and also run scandisk from your new hard drive on your original hard drive to see if that detects inconsistancies or not.

If errors are found on the old hard drive, you will have a good idea that one of the programs has been infected by some malicious program.

Good luck, I hope my suggestion works for you!

Answer 3

What o/s are you using? How are you starting ‘scandisc’?

You can scan fore files errors, file and disc errors, scan for errors only or scan for and attempt repair of from within xp.

Better is CHKDSK run outside xp.

To do this boot from your xp cd, choose repair console- not system repair on the installation option menu, repair console from the previous welcome screen.

Choose the o/s you wish to boot into and type at the command prompt CHKDSK /r (note the space between the K and the /) this is a more thorough scan that forces a check and repair of system files and scans the disc surface for errors and damaged clusters and attempts to repair them.

Any problems , let me know and I will give more detailed instructions to avoid them.

Answer 4

A bit of crystal ball work here:  You say "scandisk," so I'm guessing you mean Norton/Symantec's utility.  I've had so-so luck using it and have fallen back to Windows' own chkdsk.

Also, neither chkdsk nor scandisk can fix problems while Windows is running. If you try with chkdsk /f, it will notify you of that fact and ask if it should schedule a pre-Windows run.  This is always the best choice.  Just make sure when you do the reboot you let chkdsk finish.

Chkdsk doesn't report all the problems it finds.  Some it fixes silently.

In all, I'd say run a chkdsk /f at boot time, then try the defrag again.

Hope that helps.