Windows 7: Disk Check

Hello Greg,

chkdsk is basically used to check for HDD corruption by scannig for and attempt recovery of bad sectors on the HDD. ScanDisk from the old MS-DOS days was replaced by chkdsk.

sfc /scannow is basically used to scan Windows system files for corruption or modification, and attempt to repair them by restoring them back with a clean default copy.

The problem may be that you have it connected externally instead of internally since it's a OS drive and you are trying to create a image of it.

You may just need to take ownership and "Allow" your user account "Full Control" of the XP drive and/or files on it to be able to have full access.

However, you might check with the HDD manufacturer's website to see if they have a HDD diagnostic utility available in their support area for that specific brand and model. It will be able to help tell you if there is a problem with the drive itself or not.

Depending on what you are wanting to do with the XP drive, you could make a backup of anything that you do not want to lose on it, then format it to hopefully have it usable as a data drive if you like.

Would it be appropriate to add to the top post any information about, or possible workarounds for, what I see as an ongoing problem with disk checks that Microsoft schedules for you (e.g. upon doing chkdsk /f from Windows): which is that they don't run upon reboot?

It's somewhat similar to one of the issues described here, but this can't be involved since all the sytems I use have Windows 7 SP1:
The Chkdsk.exe program does not start correctly on a Windows 7-based computer

I haven't found any workarounds, just possible causes. From the above article and from one post, I saw the blame put on IR (Infrared). Another blamed it on wireless keyboards (which could be IR, of course) sending connection messages to the computer, which misinterprets it and therefore cancels chkdsk. Even some USB keyboards can cause it to cancel somehow.

In situations where you're doing a chkdsk remotely, these hardware issues cannot be accounted for. It would be great if there was a way to do the equivalent of what MS tries to do for you (schedule a check for the next boot only) and have it work regardless of the hardware involved.

Hello Rseiler,

MS link added to help.

Unfortunately, there are to many reasons and unknown reasons why this could happen, and is usually best to create a new thread in the Performance & Maintenance forum area to get specific help on a case by case basis.

Hi Shawn,
Thanks for your reply. I am not sure if it was you, or another poster here, but someone advised the command "chkdsk <drive:> /r /f" which I used and it worked! It repaired 2 (important) errors noted by Emsa Disk Check. The others seemed to be doc file errors - pathname or something. So I finally got over that hurdle.
Thanks.

Regards
Greg

That's great news Greg.

I moved your other off topic question to the link below so that you may get better help with there instead.

NTFS partition displayed as RAW after clone with Easus

Thanks for that

Cheers

Hi,
My chkdsk is stuck in the message where it says "Windows will now check the disk". After that, there haven't been any kind of seen progress now for 2 hours. It just keeps saying that it will check the disk. Should I just wait patiently or what?

I have 500GB HDD and used /f and /r for parameters. I know that it can take up to several hours but should there be some kind of progress seen like in tutorial's screenshot (11. C) ).

-Zomm

Hello Zomm, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If there are issues with the HDD, then it could take some time finish. Are you noticing any HDD activity with either the HDD clicking away or HDD light on the case blinking?

Hello:

I ran a disk check as suggested. However, I didn't see the results appear. Where can I view the results of a previous disk check?

Hello rshields, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Here you go.

Check Disk (chkdsk) - Read Event Viewer Log