No, chkdsk doesn't and scandisk didn't either. By the way, they are
essentially just two different versions of the same program.
Although they don't ruin the disk, they add to its usage
unnecessarily, and their frequent usage could cause the disk to not
last quite as long.
But the main point I was trying to make was just that there is no need
to run it often.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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Never had a bad experience with chkdsk, but I've had two bad
experiences with Scandisk grinding HD until they're dead. The worst
was when Scandisk kept running and would not shut off. I could hear
the 'weak' spot on the surface go from normal sound to scouring sound
as the program ground off the heads/surface with multiple passes back
and forth, back and forth over the same spot, until...
So, instead of being able to [maybe] get the data section off the good
parts of this hard drive before it totally died, I ended up being
quoted $1800 by a local service for data mining.
In the old days the following thinking applied: a hard drive
deteriorated by slightly going out of alignment, until the tracking
just didn't work anymore. So, if you ran your chkdsk program often
[also called 'data scrubber'], the data was picked up and placed back
down again, thus the physical location of the data kept following
exactly where the HD heads wanted to see data. Thus, 'unnecessarily;
running chkdsk preserved and prolonged the use of the HD. Don't know
if it's an urban myth, but sounded logical.
There were also some utilities that allowed you to check the tracking
of the drive. The utility moved the head purposely to either side of
'center' and the errors in the data showed whether the heads were
still centered, or were slightly shifting. Haven't seen anything like
that lately either.
Robert
