Corrupted C: drive?

Hi, first, if you have a recent full 3rd party disk image of your complete O/S- you can simply restore that to a different disk and be back as you were when you created the disk image.

The routine and regular use of disk imaging is endlessly recommended here. (Macrium Reflect, Aomei Backupper, Hasleo BAckup etc - free versions are good enough for many- plus large enough external storage).

I will assume you have not been using that- yet- in which case this may be a painful lesson.


You appear to have jumped ahead and skipped basic checks.
Has your disk failed?
That's the first thing to check. You say you

moved disk(ssd) to that machine to look at the files

.
I hope that was as an external USB disk- was it?

Using that other PC run Crystal Diskinfo (free) and see what it says about your disk. Simply launch it and look.

If ok, again with your disk connected to that PC, run
chkdsk X: /scan
replacing X with each partition letter on the disk in turn.

Each time look at the end of the report and note whether it passes or fails.

Use a 3rd party partition manager (Minitool Partition Wizard is good) and view the disk.
Post a screenshot of its partitions thus:

Tutorial on screenshots available if needed in the searchable Tutorials section (link at the top).

You say: SFC fails.
This is only worth trying if the disk checks out (above) and chkdsk passes.

I assume therefore you know how to run SFC /SCANNOW on an offline O/S.
See e.g.
How to use Windows 10's System File Checker (SFC) scannow command to fix problems | Windows Central
- the section

How to repair Windows 10 from System File Checker offline

(White on a black box)

Corrupt disk can just be file system which check disk can fix the others is the hardware fault with actual bad sector's

In the Recovery Environment, the command for SFC is different then those that are run within Windows.
As stated, you would only run these commands if the Drive was healthy. It sounds like the drive is failing.

Remove the SSD and attach it to a working computer via a USB adapter, as you have. Copy your personal User Files (ie) Downloads, Desktop, Documents etc and save them to that computer or another external HDD or Flash Drive.

Then run Diagnostics on the disk. Download Crystal Disk Info and or DiskGenius in my signature. Select the now external disk and view the SMART Info, if the health is anything less the Good, the disk needs to be replaced.

If the drive is Good, and your files are backed up, then you can do a Clean Install of Windows.

@markky99


Open a command prompt as Admin and type these commands...
If the disk(s) are GPT, you'll see an asterisk in the GPT column.

It will be much clearer if you can follow what I asked:

Use a 3rd party partition manager (Minitool Partition Wizard is good) and view the disk.
Post a screenshot of its partitions ...

Why? It provides a lot more info, and shows a small partition that is NOT shown by Disk Management by design.

The picture in Post #6 shows Disk 3 which includes the G:\System drive, shows incorrect Hidden Partitions for a GPT Initialized drive. (ie) no 100MB FAT32 EFI partition.
However the latest picture in post #9 shows Disk 4 with G:\System drive showing the correct GPT Partitions (ie) 100 MB FAT32 EFI hidden Partition?
Did you change something?