CheckFolder

Intensive read and write operations on storage devices physically wear them off in time, and CD/DVD/s are the most sensible storage means in this regard. Issues with these operations can cause your system to freeze, but there are specialized tools to use and check whether or not content can be read, and CheckFolder is one of them.

The core purpose of the application is to help you find out if files inside a particular region can be read, not written. This is particularly useful in the case of CDs and DVDs, especially if you just pulled them out of an old drawer and want to, for example, enjoy some songs you completely forgot about.

Note, however, that optical media is not the only target, and you’re free to scan any location on your computer. This is easily established in the window, where you get to use a built-in browse dialog to select a folder or an entire drive, fixed or removable. Sadly, there’s no context menu integration for faster trigger of the scan.

The visual design is pretty intuitive, with a description panel to let you know what it’s all about. A different section shows process details, such as total progress, file progress, as well as estimated and remaining time, number of processed files and folders, and the number of encountered errors.

There are several skins to cycle through to make the design suit your style. Also inside the options menu you find the possibility to create location shortcuts so that later on you start the scan with even less effort than having to navigate to a particular location. The default CD/DVD drive is already added to serve as an example.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that CheckFolder doesn’t really help you solve any problems, but it’s sure to let you know if there are any. Particularly useful for CD/DVDs, it’s easy to configure, with options to set location shortcuts for frequent scan operations.