Chkdsk Issue/questions

So I'm trying to run CHKDSK to fix some issues with my harddrive, but I'm not sure whether its working or not.
I didn't use the command-line method, but rather set it up through the gui.
I restarted, and a message came up that said something like "checking C:\ press any button to abort testing" and then a counter went down to 1 and stopped.
After this, the message stayed on the screen for 10-15 minutes, before the monitor shut off.
That is all that has happened. No other activity can be descried.

Is checkdisk running? Should I just wait it out, or should I try and run it elsewise?

Keep in mind that I'm not a techie, and don't plan on being one, so I don't really know what I'm doing.

Thanks

Grond,
Welcome to Seven Forums.

Did your computer turn off?

Does your computer have a little led light that flashes whenever there is disk activity?

If yes, then is the light flashing?

GROND said:

So I'm trying to run CHKDSK to fix some issues with my harddrive, but I'm not sure whether its working or not.
I didn't use the command-line method, but rather set it up through the gui.
I restarted, and a message came up that said something like "checking C:\ press any button to abort testing" and then a counter went down to 1 and stopped.
After this, the message stayed on the screen for 10-15 minutes, before the monitor shut off.
That is all that has happened. No other activity can be descried.

Is checkdisk running? Should I just wait it out, or should I try and run it elsewise?

Keep in mind that I'm not a techie, and don't plan on being one, so I don't really know what I'm doing.

Thanks

Grond,
This doesn't directly answer your question, but here are a few links which may be of interest to you:

Hard drive diagnostics and utilities Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
latest diagnostic software and utilities from the manufacturer of your hard drive(s).



Conner
Fujitsu
Hitachi
IBM
Maxtor
Quantum
Samsung
Seagate
Toshiba
Western Digital


Hitachi Drive Fitness Testhttp://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/suppor...2_v416_b00.iso
tests SCSI, IDE and SATA drives without overwriting data

You did not say how big your HD is but understand chkdsk can take MANY hours, even more than a full day to complete on large drives. You should start it, and walk away until done.

If you cued up ChkDsk in the your system drive's Properties>Tools, it should restart to a black screen and show progress of the five stages of chkdsk. Not always exactly accurate in it's countdown, but it should show progress.

Anything less makes the HD suspect so use the link Karl provided above to download and burn to CD your HD maker's diag/repair utility to run full booted scan. This can salvage a failing HD, or let you know how serious the fail is.

My hard drive is a 1.5tb Seagate Barracuda, so I could see how chkdsk would take a while, although all of the discussion and direction I could find on chkdsk showed that there was a display of the process as it happened.

I was, due to whatever issue was occurring, unable to boot to windows but had, just before the issue arose, scheduled chkdsk to run on my next reboot so it automatically ran the (one miraculous) time it managed to make it that far along the boot process. I don't know how to use the command prompt and don't have too much interest in learning.

I did manage to solve the issue, however, by buying a cheaper second internal hard drive, installing windows on it, and performing a full reformat of the troublesome hard drive from there.

Thanks for the responses.
GROND

Grond,
I'm glad to hear that you exercised a solution.

Performing a Check Disk or a Defragmentation on a disk of that size will take a very long time compared to many operations.

I recommend that you use the appropriate disk test program from the manufacturer of your 1.5 TB disk to make sure it is 100% in order.

Why? Because interrupting a Check Disk operation can cause problems.

Unless you need that 1.5 TB as one humongous partition, then I suggest you use Disk Management to create several partitions in that drive. A 500 GB partition will defrag and check disk in a tolerable amount of time although you can still be looking at 4 hours.

to run Disk Management:
WIN key | type DISKMGMT.MSC | Enter key