Fresh off the last post regarding hard drive failures, now might be a good time actually go through how to check your hard drive for errors. In Windows, this is quite simple:

1. Open My Computer.
2. Right click on the drive, and select Properties.
3. On the Tools tab click “Check Now” in the Error-checking dialog area.

This test will perform a surface scan check for defects as well as check for bad sectors on your drive (both of these are bad if it occurs). If you receive any errors or warnings, you might want to double check your backups just in case…