CheckDisk is a wrapper for the checkdisk disk scanning tool of Windows. It basically offers a gui, or graphical user interface for the commands that are otherwise only accessible via the command line.

The program displays all available controls on the main screen after startup. Four core areas are available.

• Chkdisk Behavior – You select the main hard disk partition that you want to scan here. A pulldown menu lists all the available drives and a list of scan modes. The modes range from scanning only over scanning and fixing to scanning, recovering and re-evaluating.
• Rescan – This specifies if scandisk will run multiple times on the drive. You can configure it to run until all drive errors are fixed or until a set limit of scans has been reached.
• Scan Additional Partitions – You can add a total of four additional partitions here that are scanned with the same parameters selected for the main partition under the Behavior section.
• Autochk – Here you can select to scan the partitions on next boot or remove the action again.

A click on Start initiates the scan. Be aware that you may not be able to scan the system partition with Windows running. For that you need to select Scan selected on next boot.

CheckDisk can create log files of the scans which are then accessible on consecutive runs.

The software is offered as a portable version and installer. Windows users who want more control and better access may want to give it a try. The download is offered at the developer website.

Green squares indicate no errors while red squares point to read errors in that sector. Pretty much every drive can be scanned including hard disks, floppy disks, CD or DVDs and flash drives.

Ariolic Disk Scanner is a portable application that can be run from any location without installation. The main differences to Windows Scan Disk are the visual representation of the results, the portability of the application and no error correction.

Scan Disk tries to correct errors that it discovered while the Disk Scanner is only showing them but not doing anything about them.