Chkdsk Issue/questions

GROND said:

That sounds like a great idea karlsnooks.
I had to interrupt the chkdsk operation because it seemed to be going nowhere and I needed my comp to be up and running quickly for my job, but it seemed like a bad move when I did it.

I ran a hard reformat of the whole 1.5tb drive and I haven't experienced problems yet, although I should try your partition idea, as it sounds the safest.
When I partition a drive, I can reformat a troublesome partition without erasing my data on other partitions of the same disk, correct?

GROND

correct. Doing partition is a good way for a large HDD. and you can format or repair any troublesome partition without affecting others

on my pc i divide my HDD into 5 partition

C(SYSTEM)-windows,program files
D(MEDIA)-for any movies,videos,music videos,song,mp3 etc
E(IMAGES)-pictures,photoshop work,wallpapers etc
F(STUFF)-works stuff,documents(as a replacement for my document)
G(GAMES)-for games installation and game installers

@GROND

A suggestion: based on your travails over the last several days, create and religiously follow a backup plan. The following is a succinct outline; I urge you to research the what, where, when, why, and hows.

Create a small OS-only partition on one HDD. Place ONLY the OS and everyday apps (e.g. utilities) on that partition. How small? Depends on the number/size of the apps you intend to use. I have a 100GB OS partition (260+ apps). Why do this? It is primarily the OS partition that becomes corrupt: keep it small (it backs up quickly), back it up often (keeps the backup current).

Depending on the variety of the data, create a second/third partition and distribute your docs, MP3s, JPEGS, Games, etc., over them. Why? Keeps them small (avoids lengthy backups as you back up only partitions that change - if it's all on one partition, you back it up whether it's changed or not). For example, I have a partition for games that I rarely backup since it does not change except when I add a game. You can get proprietary apps that can backup individual files/directories but those mention herein do not do so. Regardless, I find it easier/quicker to back up an entire small partition rather than search through it and select individual files/directories that have changed.

Finally, distribute your backup files between the two HDDs. Why? You want to store the data on magnetic media (not optical which degrades or is subject to undisclosed read-write errors) So, whatever is on HDD 0 you back up and store on HDD 1; what is on HDD 1 you backup and store on HDD 0). By so doing you always have two copies of your data on separate HDDs and it is unlikely that both HDDs will brick at the same time. However, if you have extraordinarily important data, store that externally as well (now you have three copies) on a flash drive or external HDD.

Also, everyone has their opinion about image backup apps. Since you have a Seagate HDD, you can go to Seagate and DL the free Discwizard which is built on the Acrionis platform (it's Acronis with some features disabled) It creates reasonable sized (compressed) backups very quickly.

Monk