To try to figure out whether the disk was causing the freezing at that place, or
whether the operating system was causing the freezing at that place, I would run
the DOS version of scandisk rather than the Windows version, and see what
happens.

Important: In order to run the DOS version of scandisk in as close to a DOS
environment as possible, I would restart the computer, and just *before* it says
"Starting Windows 95", hit the F8 key for the Windows menu. Once at the menu,
select "Command Prompt Only."  At the resulting C: prompt, type scandisk. Once
in the DOS scandisk interface, be sure to select "thorough".

If running DOS scandisk in thorough mode doesn't show any bad sectors, then you
probably have some different sort of conflict when running the Windows version
of scandisk and there is probably nothing wrong with your hard drive. If it does
show bad sectors, my advice is always to replace the drive before it gets worse.

As for your other question -- 200MB of free hard drive space is quite ample.
Once you have less than 100MB of hard drive space, it is time to get nervous
about space.  In between, like the 124MB of free space you have, means keep an
eye on it lest it drop down too low.

Roxanne Pierce
R2 Systems, San Diego
mailto:[log in to unmask]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Michael Beechey
> Sent: Friday, July 10, 1998 05:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Scandisk chokes?
>
> I have a problem with Scandisk freezing the computer up, on verify
> surface, on C partition....stops on sector 1 of 339. On normal scan
> it's OK and defrag works OK, doesn't show any damaged sectors.
>
> Other partitions OK . I have freed up 124 meg on C:. What is the
> minimum amount of free space I need to leave on C: to keep Win
> happy?