External HDD question (Windows OS)

[Satyaa]

When I open disk properties in Windows Explorer, go to Tools tab, and select 'Error Checking', isn't that running chkdsk?

No, I don't think so - at least not in its full incarnation. I believe running it (or clicking the tools button) inside windows merely causes it to report on your bad sector situation, but does not actually fix anything.

When chkdsk c: /f /r /x is run in a Command or Powershell window a program stub is deposited which will be run at the next boot in an attempt to map out the bad sectors so that the operating system does not try to use them.

I used chkdsk in the past (may be until Windows 7 but not since 8).

The error checking from tools tab in explorer does take a long time. I finally get a message that no errors were found. I remember that it actually found/fixed errors only once, on a corrupted disk.

I started chkdsk on one of the two HDDs. It went through the first three stages and is running stage 4 now:

"Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data"

Looking at how slow it's going, this step looking for bad sectors seems like the only thing different from the explorer's error checking.

 

[David Lal]

Looking at how slow it's going, this step looking for bad sectors seems like the only thing different from the explorer's error checking.

You might like to look at another program I use. It's called DiskGenius. Chinese in origin but perfectly OK English. Hugely powerful software. Free and paid versions. With all that power one must be super careful - perfectly possible to destroy ones home PC, home network etc.

See: https://www.diskgenius.com/

 

[Satyaa]

I may have seen it in the past but will take another look.

Thanks for the link

 

[Satyaa]

When I open disk properties in Windows Explorer, go to Tools tab, and select 'Error Checking', isn't that running chkdsk?

No, I don't think so - at least not in its full incarnation. I believe running it (or clicking the tools button) inside windows merely causes it to report on your bad sector situation, but does not actually fix anything.

When chkdsk c: /f /r /x is run in a Command or Powershell window a program stub is deposited which will be run at the next boot in an attempt to map out the bad sectors so that the operating system does not try to use them.

I used chkdsk in the past (may be until Windows 7 but not since 8).

The error checking from tools tab in explorer does take a long time. I finally get a message that no errors were found. I remember that it actually found/fixed errors only once, on a corrupted disk.

I started chkdsk on one of the two HDDs. It went through the first three stages and is running stage 4 now:

"Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data"

Looking at how slow it's going, this step looking for bad sectors seems like the only thing different from the explorer's error checking.

After almost a day (18+ hours) it is now stuck here. I don't know how long it was stuck overnight. I don't understand the lack of space message because this file is about 28GB and the disk has 770GB free space.

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
A disk read error occurredc0000483
The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters
detected in file 1E71A of name \<path>\<file>.mp4.
Progress: 307065 of 677104 done; Stage: 45%; Total: 54%; ETA: 18:20:17 ...

Thanks.

 

[Robert Zanatta]

The drive reserves sectors that can replace bad sectors that are in use. The error states that the reserve is empty.

You could let chkdsk complete as it might fix the problem.

But try running a program that displays SMART information for the drive. Part of that information should include the number of sectors that have been found to be bad and have been replaced from the reserve.

Your drive manufacturer might have a utility to view the SMART information, otherwise Crystal Disk Info will work same it is a free utility. These programs can be run while your drive is in use (like running chkdsk) as they are just querying the SMART information. Installing them won't be an issue as the problem is not on your system drive.

Crystal:

Loading…

crystalmark.info

If there are errors indicated in the SMART data, the aren't a lot of good options other than replacing the drive. If there are very little of no errors, then reformatting the drive might help, and a propert RAM test might also be prudent.

 

[Satyaa]

The drive reserves sectors that can replace bad sectors that are in use. The error states that the reserve is empty.

You could let chkdsk complete as it might fix the problem.

But try running a program that displays SMART information for the drive. Part of that information should include the number of sectors that have been found to be bad and have been replaced from the reserve.

Your drive manufacturer might have a utility to view the SMART information, otherwise Crystal Disk Info will work same it is a free utility. These programs can be run while your drive is in use (like running chkdsk) as they are just querying the SMART information. Installing them won't be an issue as the problem is not on your system drive.

Crystal:

https://crystalmark.info/en/download/

If there are errors indicated in the SMART data, the aren't a lot of good options other than replacing the drive. If there are very little of no errors, then reformatting the drive might help, and a propert RAM test might also be prudent.

Yes, I have run the manufacturer's diagnostics may be twice in the last year. This is the first time the bad sectors have shown up.

Honestly, I have been expecting that these drives might die, given their age (at least 5 years now).

The chkdsk is progressing (at 90% now). I will do what I can to fix this but probably time to replace the drive(s).

 

[David Lal]

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
A disk read error occurredc0000483
The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters
detected in file 1E71A of name \<path>\<file>.mp4.
Progress: 307065 of 677104 done; Stage: 45%; Total: 54%; ETA: 18:20:17 .

I am pretty sure that will be a cyclic redundancy (CRC) error and due to the bad sectors. The disk is dying. If I were you I'd try to copy anything precious off that disk and onto another while that still be possible i.e. now. Eventually the disk will fail completely. You are lucky in that, as I've understood you, we are not talking about your main system disk so the task is relatively easy.

With the data safely copied elsewhere you could format the drive. A proper format, not a 'quick' one. I'd probably open a command window or boot Windows PE then run a diskpart command but I think one can do this inside Windows too.

The free space that you think you have on the disk may, in effect, be inaccessible to the system. Reformatting would be something of a solution but it is liable to be a short-lived one because a dying disk will quickly generate more bad sectors.

I would not trust that disk for anything important.

 

[Satyaa]

Yes, that's the direction I'm headed. Looking for replacement drives (started another thread for recommendations).

As I have two disks and all files on these are the same, I will try to recover files damaged on one disk from the other.

Thanks.

Edit: It did progress from that 45% after a while, slowed down at 91% again, and is now moving slowly at 96%.

So far that mp4 file is the only corrupted one as reported by this log.

--
See my profile (About me) for gear and my posting policy.

 

[David Lal]

Yes, that's the direction I'm headed. Looking for replacement drives (started another thread for recommendations).

Ah, I have not seen that other post. For what are you looking? For data (photos, spreadsheets etc.) I have two 5tb Seagate USB-3 drives. I swap them over every few days so my backups are at the most 5 days old. They work fine and in the UK cost, new, about GBP£100 each.

My recent disk disaster though, unlike yours, involved the main system disk. That was a Hitachi 1tb Sata III drive. I've replaced it with a Toshiba 1tb Sata III, 7400 rpm drive with 32mb cache. It works fine. I bought it secondhand via Ebay, it was almost new and cost me only about GBP£20.

I liked it so much I bought another one exactly the same, also Toshiba, similar price and condition. Partitioned and formatted + clean installs of Windows 10 + all the software packages I use on both disks. The second drive sits standing by in case I have another disaster.

 

[Satyaa]

Yes, that's the direction I'm headed. Looking for replacement drives (started another thread for recommendations).

Ah, I have not seen that other post.

Loading…

www.dpreview.com

For what are you looking? For data (photos, spreadsheets etc.)

All personal files, photos, etc., nothing related to personal finances or similar needing encryption. Looking for something under $200.

After I copy over everything and determine how useful these two drives are, I will look for another 8TB to go with the first one.

I have two 5tb Seagate USB-3 drives. I swap them over every few days so my backups are at the most 5 days old. They work fine and in the UK cost, new, about GBP£100 each.

The two 4TB drives that I am trying to replace are also Seagate portable USB drives. I am thinking of at least 8 TB because I have come close to filling up these 4TB drives.

My recent disk disaster though, unlike yours, involved the main system disk. That was a Hitachi 1tb Sata III drive. I've replaced it with a Toshiba 1tb Sata III, 7400 rpm drive with 32mb cache. It works fine. I bought it secondhand via Ebay, it was almost new and cost me only about GBP£20.

Both my internal drives are SSDs... 1TB (C) and 2TB (D) that I upgraded in two instalments from the original single HD.

I liked it so much I bought another one exactly the same, also Toshiba, similar price and condition. Partitioned and formatted + clean installs of Windows 10 + all the software packages I use on both disks. The second drive sits standing by in case I have another disaster.

 

[Satyaa]

From this log, it looks like there are no bad sectors/clusters in the disk free space or among user files.

There is one file that suffered from read errors. I think I can recover it from the second disk. It is a 27GB video file. I am guessing this read error is different from bad sectors (and probably what indicates that the disk is deteriorating).

I will now run chkdsk on the second disk

Meanwhile, I am also planning for two replacement disks for these two aging ones.

C:\WINDOWS\System32>chkdsk f: /f /r /x
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is 4_TB_Gold.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
677120 file records processed.
File verification completed.
Phase duration (File record verification): 26.38 seconds.
41296 large file records processed.
Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.
0 bad file records processed.
Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 1.95 milliseconds.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
4406 reparse records processed.
700886 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
Phase duration (Index verification): 39.99 seconds.
0 unindexed files scanned.
Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 161.82 milliseconds.
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 2.25 milliseconds.
4406 reparse records processed.
Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 21.86 milliseconds.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 143.34 milliseconds.
11884 data files processed.
Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 0.61 milliseconds.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
10287568 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Phase duration (USN journal verification): 361.31 milliseconds.

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
A disk read error occurredc0000483
The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters
detected in file 1E71A of name \<path>\<file>.mp4.
677104 files processed.
File data verification completed.
Phase duration (User file recovery): 1.23 days.

Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters ...
204362700 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Phase duration (Free space recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

3815317 MB total disk space.
3015939 MB in 314019 files.
235584 KB in 11885 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
876787 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
817450800 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
976721407 total allocation units on disk.
204362700 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 1.23 days (106688206 ms).

--
See my profile (About me) for gear and my posting policy.

 

[Satyaa]

Yes, that's the direction I'm headed. Looking for replacement drives (started another thread for recommendations).

Ah, I have not seen that other post. For what are you looking? For data (photos, spreadsheets etc.) I have two 5tb Seagate USB-3 drives. I swap them over every few days so my backups are at the most 5 days old. They work fine and in the UK cost, new, about GBP£100 each.

My recent disk disaster though, unlike yours, involved the main system disk. That was a Hitachi 1tb Sata III drive. I've replaced it with a Toshiba 1tb Sata III, 7400 rpm drive with 32mb cache. It works fine. I bought it secondhand via Ebay, it was almost new and cost me only about GBP£20.

I liked it so much I bought another one exactly the same, also Toshiba, similar price and condition. Partitioned and formatted + clean installs of Windows 10 + all the software packages I use on both disks. The second drive sits standing by in case I have another disaster.

There was quite a bit to learn about these drive failures and compatibility issues via these three threads I have posted. Though I have noticed this problem in my drive behavior for several months now (may be a year), I am glad I posted this now. It is time to replace them.

One large 20+GB video file was damaged on drive 1, and another large 16GB video file was damaged on the drive 2. I can get a good copy of each from the other drive.

I decided it's best to simplify the problem and focus on immediate needs. Replacing the two failing 4TB drives with two 5TB drives appears to be the best option. After long consideration, the portability of these drives seems more important than the larger capacity of externally powered drives.

I have chosen WD because it offers two year warranty for around the same price, while the Seagate version has one year.

I added about 300 GB in photos and videos this year, and a little less last year and past years. Even if the volume increases a bit next year, the 5TB drives should last three to four years.

I decided to focus on larger external storage like a NAS solution three years down the line, or a cloud alternative, so that I can access files from multiple PCs.

Thanks.

 

[David Lal]

I decided it's best to simplify the problem and focus on immediate needs. Replacing the two failing 4TB drives with two 5TB drives appears to be the best option. After long consideration, the portability of these drives seems more important than the larger capacity of externally powered drives.

I have chosen WD because it offers two year warranty for around the same price, while the Seagate version has one year.

I added about 300 GB in photos and videos this year, and a little less last year and past years. Even if the volume increases a bit next year, the 5TB drives should last three to four years.

I decided to focus on larger external storage like a NAS solution three years down the line, or a cloud alternative, so that I can access files from multiple PCs.

Thanks.

That all seems like sound thinking to me! Like you, it is my recent drive failures that has forced me to learn a great deal very fast. I should perhaps say re-learn because I have been a software developer/IT support person/IT director for well over 40 years so have done all this before time and again but have not had to fix my own machine(s) for a long, long time.

I now have a different problem - an organisational one: I have got so many drives and PCs sitting around It's hard to remember what data I have put where!

 

[Satyaa]

I decided it's best to simplify the problem and focus on immediate needs. Replacing the two failing 4TB drives with two 5TB drives appears to be the best option. After long consideration, the portability of these drives seems more important than the larger capacity of externally powered drives.

I have chosen WD because it offers two year warranty for around the same price, while the Seagate version has one year.

I added about 300 GB in photos and videos this year, and a little less last year and past years. Even if the volume increases a bit next year, the 5TB drives should last three to four years.

I decided to focus on larger external storage like a NAS solution three years down the line, or a cloud alternative, so that I can access files from multiple PCs.

Thanks.

That all seems like sound thinking to me! Like you, it is my recent drive failures that has forced me to learn a great deal very fast. I should perhaps say re-learn because I have been a software developer/IT support person/IT director for well over 40 years so have done all this before time and again but have not had to fix my own machine(s) for a long, long time.

I can relate. I started playing with PCs/MS-DOS in early 80s. Got good with old tech hardware, especially using Norton tools back then. Not a developer though I learned a few languages along the way.

Moving from accounting to IT as a Business Analyst, and now as a Business Applications Manager, I focus more on business process side of things and lost touch with hardware related stuff after Windows 3.1

The more I read about storage technology these days, the more it confuses me.

I now have a different problem - an organisational one: I have got so many drives and PCs sitting around It's hard to remember what data I have put where!

Not quite there yet but probably on my way

Thanks

 

[Vernon D Rainwater]

Apparently, it's a common problem. It probably isn't due to failing hardware.

A little Googling gives the suggestion of enabling write caching for the external drives. (It's disabled by default.)

I'll have to try that myself. I haven't had a copy quit altogether, but I've seen transfer rates drop to low levels.

The downside is that data that is in the cache and not yet written to the disk can be lost if power fails or the drive is unplugged with using the "safely remove" feature.

If that helps, please let us know.

I just experimented with turning on write caching for an external USB drive. (An enclosure for a 3.5" disk. It has a high speed type B connector.)



The data transfer rates using Windows Explorer still went up and down, in the familiar manner. Pfui.

Isn't that caused by the difference in File size. I see this in different Programs when (time to complete) changes drastically.

--
Vernon...

 

[BobKnDP]

Apparently, it's a common problem. It probably isn't due to failing hardware.

A little Googling gives the suggestion of enabling write caching for the external drives. (It's disabled by default.)

I'll have to try that myself. I haven't had a copy quit altogether, but I've seen transfer rates drop to low levels.

The downside is that data that is in the cache and not yet written to the disk can be lost if power fails or the drive is unplugged with using the "safely remove" feature.

If that helps, please let us know.

I just experimented with turning on write caching for an external USB drive. (An enclosure for a 3.5" disk. It has a high speed type B connector.)



The data transfer rates using Windows Explorer still went up and down, in the familiar manner. Pfui.

Isn't that caused by the difference in File size. I see this in different Programs when (time to complete) changes drastically.

Yes, the data transfer rate drops when large numbers of small files are in transfer.

I hoped that caching could smooth that out, but it does not.

 

[Robert Zanatta]

Apparently, it's a common problem. It probably isn't due to failing hardware.

A little Googling gives the suggestion of enabling write caching for the external drives. (It's disabled by default.)

I'll have to try that myself. I haven't had a copy quit altogether, but I've seen transfer rates drop to low levels.

The downside is that data that is in the cache and not yet written to the disk can be lost if power fails or the drive is unplugged with using the "safely remove" feature.

If that helps, please let us know.

I just experimented with turning on write caching for an external USB drive. (An enclosure for a 3.5" disk. It has a high speed type B connector.)



The data transfer rates using Windows Explorer still went up and down, in the familiar manner. Pfui.

Isn't that caused by the difference in File size. I see this in different Programs when (time to complete) changes drastically.

Yes, the data transfer rate drops when large numbers of small files are in transfer.

I hoped that caching could smooth that out, but it does not.

When you have a lot of small files on NTFS, disabling 8.3 filename creation can help improve performance. From a command prompt run:

fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1