{"id":13990,"date":"2015-04-08T05:08:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T19:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rjmprogramming.com.au\/wordpress\/?p=13990"},"modified":"2020-04-17T17:32:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T07:32:21","slug":"windows-hard-disk-primer-tutorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rjmprogramming.com.au\/ITblog\/windows-hard-disk-primer-tutorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Hard Disk Primer Tutorial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Windows<\/a>

Windows Hard Disk Primer Tutorial<\/p><\/div>\n

On Windows, many users would still have at least one hard disk installed. Typically on Windows that first main disk is called C:<\/i> … pretty boring name, huh?! … however, you can give it a nickname (for the “volume”) that will show in Windows Explorer, or when you right-click and get the properties of the disk … you can do this via the Windows Command Prompt (or DOS prompt command) …<\/p>\n


\nlabel<\/a> C: [volumeNickName]
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… and then to verify this …<\/p>\n


\nvol<\/a> C:
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

… so that’s its name … what about its contents …<\/p>\n


\ndir<\/a> C: \/s
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… or …<\/p>\n


\ntree<\/a> C: \/F
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… and what about its health …<\/p>\n


\nchkdsk<\/a> C:
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… and fixing things fixable found wrong … and for this you may need to use a Command Prompt window run by an administrator<\/i> user, and even then, you may only be able to run this at the next reboot, between the shutdown and the restart (when C: is not being accessed)) …<\/p>\n


\nchkdsk<\/a> C: \/F
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

… and we here talk of “speeding up” a computer by defragmenting its hard disk … assuming you have Defrag.exe on your path (otherwise put the whole path to it and the .exe extension, where we have “Defrag” below) …<\/p>\n


\nDefrag<\/a> C:
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

Sometimes, with Windows, a second hard disk physically installed would be called D:<\/i> and any C:’s above in commands will work for D: instead above … and there are some other mappings to drive letters are possible via (we’ll use Z: below) …<\/p>\n


\nsubst<\/a> Z: C:mypath
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… or perhaps D: is mapped from somewhere on a file server or file sharing arrangement (we’ll use T: below, and the image example below that uses a Windows 7 laptop’s Samba mapping to a MacBook Pro hard disk’s “User” path for its mapping … got its mapping name via Windows Explorer “Network” … more on this topic at this blog could be gleaned from Windows File Server and File Sharing Primer Tutorial<\/a>) …<\/p>\n


\nnet<\/a> use T: \"\\servermy media\" \/persistent:no
\n<\/code>
\n<\/p>\n

… and you should not expect that these last two mapping arrangements would support “chkdsk” nor “Defrag” as further above (which are for real physical hard disks).<\/p>\n

If this was interesting you may be interested in this<\/a> too.<\/p>\n