Check Disk Windows 11 and Repair Errors with (3 Ways)

What Is Check Disk?

Check disk ( or chkdsk) is a vital Windows utility that helps to scan the file system of a disk and its metadata for logical and physical errors. It is a holdover from disk operating systems (DOS) and has been included as part of Windows OS.

It can be used from a graphic user interface and a command prompt window with different parameters. However, you still can use it with any parameter. In this case, it only displays the status of the checked volume and does not fix any errors.

With check disk, you  can repeatedly solve the following issues:

• Unable to read data from hard disk.
• Slowness or degraded performance when accessing computer files on the computer.
• The computer shuts down abruptly during a task.
• The computer is throwing boot errors, such as BSOD, 0x00000024, fatal error reading boot.ini, etc.

The Need to Check Disk in Windows 11

There is no doubt that all the disks will finally fail or be damaged. The mechanical disk always fails at the most inopportune moments and takes your data away. You can avoid this by frequently running disk checking or backup files on a regular basis. And disk failure is the most common cause of data corruption.

Besides, the dskchk utility also helps to fix bad sectors on a hard drive, which further divides into “Soft bad sectors” and “Hard bad sectors”. The soft bad sectors refer to logical bad sectors that can be easily fixed. The hard bad sectors can only be marked as unusable.

How to Check Hard Disk in Windows 11

Here we will introduce you to how to check hard disk in Windows 11 from the GUI interface and CMD. The GUI process is the same as chkdsk /f command, which will scan for errors and then fixes the errors and marks the bad sectors to make them unusable.

To recover data before repairing hard disk errors, you need to try chkdsk /r or chkdsk /f /r in the command prompt window.

Way 1: Run Disk Checking Windows 11 with GUI Interface

Step 1. Go to File Explorer, right-click the volume you want to check for errors, and select Properties.

Step 2. Switch to the Tools tab and click Check under Error checking. Then, click OK and Apply to keep this change.

Step 3. If there are no errors on this disk, you might receive the following prompt. You can click Scan drive to continue with the scanning and wait patiently.

Way 2: CHKDSK Windows 11 Repair Errors with Command Prompt

Step 1. Type cmd in the Search box and select the top result. You need to run as an administrator.

Step 2. Type chkdsk /r or chkdsk /f /r and press Enter to check disk for errors and repair.

Notes:

• The scanning process in the command prompt requires locking the selected drive. If not, it will ask you to run Windows 11 disk check on startup.
• The /r parameter helps to recover data before it repairs and marks bad sectors. And the recovered data is usually saved as text or coded data.
• To check specific volume, such as system partition, you need to add the drive letters, chkdsk c: /f /r, for example.

✌ Important: chkdsk commands and usage

• To dismount your drive, fix bad sectors and retrieve readable info, type: chkdsk c: /f /r /x.
• To keep your drive unmounted and active, you can choose to run an online scan. Type: chkdsk c: /scan /forceofflinefix.
• To scan a volume and fix issues as you’ re using it, type: chkdsk c: /r /scan /perf.
• For other parameters or usage, refers to chkdsk commands from Microsoft.

✌ Important: chkdsk exit code meaning

The chkdsk will return the exit code after scanning. So to better understand it, you need to know the following:

• 0 refers to no errors were found.
•  1 is errors were found and fixed.
• 2 indicate you don’t specify the /f parameter. So it performs a disk cleanup or not.
• 3 indicate you don’t specify the /f parameter and the errors were not fixed. Or could not check the disk and errors are not fixed.

Way 3: Windows 11 Check Disk for Errors with PowerShell

The Check Disk tool equivalent for PowerShell is the Repair-Volume cmdlet and it offers virtually the same usage as the command prompt, but with more control.

Step 1. Search PowerShell in the Search box and select the top result with administrator priority.

Step 2. Type Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -Scan and press Enter to scan disk errors.

Tip: To display the process details, type Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -Scan -Verbose instead.

Step 3. Type Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -SpotFix and press Enter to repair disk errors (if exists).

Tip: You can choose to scan and repair disk errors at a time with “Repair-Volume -DriveLetter C -OfflineScanAndFix” command.

How to Upgrade Disk with Error in Windows 11

The disk checking Windows 11 will help you resolve logical errors easily. However, for physical errors, such as hard bad sectors, which may finally damage your disk, this tool has no way to repair them and can only mark the sectors as unusable.

So it’s suggested to clone hard drive with bad sectors and upgrade disk to a new one with magic disk cloning software for Windows 11- AOMEI Backupper Professional. It also supports Windows 10, 8, 7, XP, and Vista.

• By default, it clones only used space on a hard drive to another drive with its Intelligent clone method, which wwill save you much space.
• More importantly, this feature is also able to ignore bad sectors automatically and keep all of the good sectors when cloning.
• This cloning method also applies to clone OS only with the System Clone feature. Select it if your new hard drive or SSD is smaller than your old and problematic disk.

Step 1. Download, install, and launch hard drive cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional. Next, click Clone and then select Disk Clone.

Notes:

• The Professional edition supports cloning both data disks and systems disks (HDD/SSD or MBR/GPT). To clone data disks, the best choice is to pick the complete free Standard edition.
• To clone hard drive in Windows Server 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022, etc, try AOMEI Backupper Server edition.

Step 2. Select the hard drive with bad sectors and then another disk to receive OS and data on this disk. You will be told the target disk will be deleted, to avoid data loss, please backup files to external hard drive first.

Step 3. Confirm the operation summary and click Start Clone to upgrade disk with error in Windows 11.

✌ Important: SSD slow after clone

HDDs and SSDs start their first partition after 63 or 64 empty sectors respectively, a difference that will eventually lead to Windows 11 SSD slow issues. To prevent this issue, you need to align HDD and SSD with 4k technology embed in the SSD Alignment feature.

✌ Important: cloned drive not show full capacity

This issue usually happen to clone disk to larger disk unless you add unused space to all partition or adjust partition size manually with its Edit Partitions feature. It also helps to clone MBR disk to GPT without boot issue and vice versa.

✌ Important: Sector by sector clone or not

As the name suggests, it will clone all sectors on a hard drive, which may eventually fail due to enough space. And it take longer time. That's why it is not used in most cases. However, you need to use it if you want to clone bitlocker encrypted disks.

Summary

You can use check disk in Windows 11 to maintain and fix disk errors with 3 methods above. However, if the disk has bad sectors, it will finally fail. So if your disk has, it’s suggested to replace it with a new one. You could use powerful cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional to help you out.

If your target disk does not have enough space, you still can use its System Clone feature to migrate the operating system to SSD or HDD. Besides, it is a complete backup software for system, disk, partition, or files. You can download it to explore more.