Windows® 98 Unleashed

Preventing and Repairing Hard Disk Errors with ScanDisk

An old ad for Steve Gibson's SpinRite hard disk utilities said it all: “Hard disks die.” That's a stark message but, let's face it, an honest one. Just consider everything that a modern hard disk has to put up with:

General wear and tear: If your computer is running right now, its hard disk is spinning away at between 5,400 and 10,000 revolutions per minute. That's right, even though you're not doing anything, the hard disk is hard at work. Because of this constant activity, most hard disks simply wear out after a few years.

The old bump-and-grind: Your hard disk includes “read/write heads” that are used to read data from and write data to the disk. These heads float on a cushion of air just ...