Page 869 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Right-click the icon of the hard drive you want to check (in the This PC

window). From the shortcut menu, choose Properties; click the Tools tab,
and click Check.

Note
Geeks fondly refer to the feature described here as chkdsk (apparently named by someone with no
vowels on his keyboard). You get to the geek-friendly, text-only version of it by typing chkdsk in a
Command Prompt window. But the method described here is much better looking.

UP TO SPEED VOLUMES DEFINED

You won’t get far in this chapter, or in most PC chat rooms, without
understanding a key piece of Windows terminology: volume.

For most people, most of the time, volume means “disk.” But

technically, there’s more to it than that—a distinction that becomes
crucial if you explore the techniques described in this chapter.

If you open your This PC window, you see that each disk has its own

icon and drive letter (C:, for example). But each icon isn’t necessarily a
separate disk. It’s possible that you, or somebody in charge of your PC,
has split a single disk into multiple partitions (“POWER USERS’
CLINIC Dual Booting”), each with a separate icon and drive letter.

Clearly, the world needs a term for “an icon/drive letter in the This PC
window, whether it’s a whole disk or not.” That term is volume.

Disk Management

“Disk management” isn’t just a cool, professional-sounding skill—it’s the
name of a built-in Windows maintenance program that lets you perform all

kinds of operations on your hard disk. To open it, right-click the Start menu;
from the shortcut menu, choose Disk Management. (Only administrator
account–holders are welcome.)