Is there such thing as Scandisk/Checkdisk?

First off, sorry if this is not the right category to post this question, but I cannot figure out where else post it.

I have a dumb question to ask, but one irritating nuisance that I used to struggle with was the Scandisk/Checkdisk process on Windows XP startup whenever my computer was accidentally unplugged or a black out came up.

However, now running Windows 8, yesterday I accidentally unplugged my laptop, which had not the battery in place, hence I had to turn it on again but I didn't see the infamous process so I want to ask.

What happens when the computer is shut down abruptly?
Is there a background process to verify data integrity or fix things?

I never liked scandisk, but I dislike even more lost data chains or corrupted files that could result from issues like this.

 

Actually, the none of my upgrading went very well hehe, the first few times i booted into windows 7 on my new SSD, i was asked to scan the disk for errors. Of course that meant i wouldnt be using the system for a while (or so i thought) so i let the computer do its thing and went back to watch tv.

I am also afraid of losing data due to outages, and have started looking into a UPS.

 

Thanks for the explanation! I was concerned about data integrity and HD health, after I removed the annoying chkdsk from the registry of my previous XP computer and began to have hard drive reading errors.

Yeah, I have seen that this operating system runs faster and smoothly even when it's downloading and installing something in the background, and not yet required to reboot to complete an installation as in the past.

In fact today, I don't need to reboot at any time of the day, as opposed to being running with previous Windows version when, at some point, the system resources where exhausted.

 

Funny, on booting my computer yesterday it ran chkdisk again, this time it looks like it actually fixed some things. Now a few programs that werent working ARE working. I was blaming it on the software i was using, when it ended up being something wrong with the harddrive. NICE!

(this was for my windows 7 install btw)