Disk Volume Errors on my USB external hard drive

[trigan]

After about a year of use, this window came up on my screen with a tab in it Perform System Maintenance.I decided to click on the perform tab. It subsequently said that DISK VOLUME ERRORS WERE DETECTED.

I was advised to run CHKDSK and I did so twice over a 2 week period. CHKDSK took ages to finish its 5 stages. It then restarted my computer automatically. When windows fully booted, I ran System Maintenance program again and disk volume errors were still detected.
I subsequently realized that when I disconnected my USB 1 terabyte external hard drive and then booted my computer, no disk volume errors were reported when I ran the Perform System Maintenance program.


Suppose I copy and paste all the files I have on my external hard drive onto my C drive and then reformat my external hard drive. Will this fix these disk volume errors?

Can you please tell me how to best fix these errors in my external hard drive ?

 

[ben946210]

I recommend scanning the hard drive using UBCD with the diagnostic tools for your brand of hard drive. It may have bad sectors. I would copy all the data off, if you could before testing just in case the drive is bad. That way, if were to die during test, you won't lose anything.

 

[trigan]

Thank you for your reply. Please explain what UBCD means? By diagnostic tools, do you mean a program that can repair bad sectors like the error check program in Windows can do when you right click a drive in Computer folder, selecting Properties >Tools > Check Now for errors and ticking the 2 boxes for "automatically check the file system errors" and "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" ?

 

[ben946210]

UBCD is Ultimate Boot CD. It is a disc of compiled tools for diagnosing computers. It can be found Ultimate Boot CD - Overview Download this and burn it to a CD.When you boot into it, select HDD and then select the brand of hard drive you have (as shown on the picture). Use hard drive tool to scan the drive.

Also, I do not recommend repairing bad sectors(if they are present). I have had bad experiences with that in the past. I would go and buy a new hard drive. It is not worth the risk if you can get a new drive. Of course I am only saying this if the drive is bad.

 

[trigan]

Does the UBCD have a repair bad sectors capability? So if I understand you correctly, using the Windows Check Now for errors facility or the UBCD one should make no difference to the risk involved in having my data damaged on my external hard drive. I have all my video and muic files on my external drive as well as my Acronis backups.
In that case, I think it is best if I invest my time in learning how to make online backups of all the folders and files in my external hard drive and make online copies of my backups I have on it before I proceed. This will also protect my data in case of theft or fire.
Is there a reliable free online storage website ? Please give me a few links on how to learn to make online backups?
Thank you. Your help is much appreciated for a lot depends on it!