page_title: Disk utility
section_title: Disk checkers
hierarchical_section_title: Disk utility / Disk checkers
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot of Microsoft's chkdsk.exe (NT version) in action.
context_page_description: A disk utility is a utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters and other mount points, renaming volumes, disk checking, and disk formatting, which are otherwise handled separately by multiple other built-in commands. Each operating system has its own basic disk utility, and there are also separate programs which can recognize and adjust the different filesystems of multiple OSes. Types of disk utilities include disk checkers, disk cleaners and disk space analyzers
context_section_description: A disk checker is a utility program which can scan a hard disk to find files or areas that are corrupted in some way, or were not correctly saved, and eliminate them for a more efficiently operating hard drive. This is not to be confused with a disk cleaner, which can find files that are unnecessary for computer operation, or take up considerable amounts of space.
  Some disk checkers can perform a whole surface scan to attempt to find any possible bad sectors, whereas others scan only the logical structure of files on the hard disk.
  Operating systems often include one such tool. For example:
  CHKDSK
  fsck
caption: CHKDSK, a disk checker
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