I've tried checking my system drive using both touch /forcefsck and fsck from a DVD boot of Ubuntu, and both times it's been done remarkably quickly; like a few seconds for a 101 GB partition. Is that... normal?
This is being done due to some slightly odd behaviour on my computer -- a disappearing GRUB, and the failure of the computer to boot beyond powering up once or twice. The filesystem is well-established (a partition on a 500 GB drive), and the computer works normally when it boots, so I was trying to fsck for drive errors.