To Scandisk or not to Scandisk ??? That is the question !! Good or Bad ? ???
Does the following help?
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=19387.msg298121#msg298121
OOPs, jumped the gun. David is right. 
:-[ ;D
I don’t believe hines232 is talking about defragmenting the HDD but using scandisk (A.K.A. chkdsk) to check for hard disk errors (though I could be wrong) and repair any bad sectors, etc.
@ hines232, if my assumption is correct:
I would only do this if I kept getting unexplained errors, crashes, etc. and was unable to identify a cause, it isn’t something that I would do on a regular basis. I can’t recall when I did one last, years ago would be about right.
;D Right on the money DavidR. Thanks for the input, Always wondered.
You’re welcome.
If you think your disk may be “dodgy”, I’ve found the free versions of Hard Disk Sentinel which has resident analysis & fault logging, and HD Tune’s real-time Error Scan alternative to chkdsk very useful.
Not ME supported, but thanks . !
Sorry.
I missed that “minor detail” in your sig. :-[
Just checking which older versions of HDS support ME.
Okay, version 1.40 works on 98SE. http://www.hdsentinel.com/hdsentinel_setup140.zip
Has fewer features but hopefully still logs reallocated sectors.
Will check it out, and thanks for checking for me.