CHKDSK /F fails with An unspecified error occurred.

FreeBooter said:

Thanks for letting us know what was causing the problem.

No one is happier to find the cause than me, believe me! I thought all my backup drives had failed at once.

I've reported it (anonymously as I don't have an MS account) in the Feedback Hub.

Bree said:

No one is happier to find the cause than me, believe me! I thought all my backup drives had failed at once.

I've reported it (anonymously as I don't have an MS account) in the Feedback Hub.

There is one more question that needs to be answered what happens if you use /x switch?

FreeBooter said:

There is one more question that needs to be answered what happens if you use /x switch?

No, that made no difference. See post #3.

Okay thanks!

Rather that turning off ransomware protection, a workaround is to add C:\Windows\System32\chkdsk.exe to the list of apps allowed through Control Folder Access.

Add or Remove Allowed Apps for Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Bree said:

Light bulb moment!

It only fails if I have ransomware protection (aka controlled folder access) turned on in Windows Defender!
(which I do on all my machines)

THANK YOU!

I was copying files to my network share and got "Error Code 27: The drive cannot find the sector requested. [CopyFileEx]"

I copied some of them into a different folder and it worked, then I tried to move the file locally (into the desired folder - on the same drive) and got "Sector not found" error (in FAR manager). ("The drive cannot find the sector requested" in command line copy.)

There are 2 files in 1 folder, I was able to copy, move any of them to any folder, but I couldn't copy/move both of them into the same folder. (I renamed both of them so their short file name do not match, but it didn't matter.)
I run chkdsk and it said everything is OK.
I run chkdsk /f and got "An unspecified error occurred (6e74667363686b2e 1475)."
I started sfc /scannow ...

I found this, disabled Malwarebytes Ransomeware Protection. And I was able to copy the files.
I re-enabled and the problem occurred again...
I disabled again but then it still had the same error when copying those 2 files... so I don't f**king know.

I uninstalled Malwarebytes, disabled Win Defender (via group policy - because I couldn't just disable it from control panel or stop the service, I couldn't even remove feature)…

Microsoft at this point is just asking everyone to use Linux instead of Windows...

Bree said:

Rather that turning off ransomware protection, a workaround is to add C:\Windows\System32\chkdsk.exe to the list of apps allowed through Control Folder Access.

Add or Remove Allowed Apps for Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10 | Tutorials

A BIG THANK YOU for this thread and the solution it brings. I have just tried it and chkdsk /R E: is back to working fine on my second machine. "E" being my external HDD at issue in my case. ,

IronZorg89 said:

A BIG THANK YOU for this thread and the solution it brings...

Glad I could help. It was when investigating an HDD with issues that I hit this this problem and discovered the solution. As I said in post #11...

No one is happier to find the cause than me, believe me! I thought all my backup drives had failed at once.

Bree said:

Glad I could help. It was when investigating an HDD with issues that I hit this this problem and discovered the solution. As I said in post #11...

No one is happier to find the cause than me, believe me

Feeling likewise, but I still don't understand why MS is blocking their own processes.

In my own experience, Notification center (at extreme right corner of Taskbar) always showing some Windows' own processes being blocked by Controlled folder Access like conhost.exe; msedge.exe etc... . This is beyond me, but I consider it to be a topic for another day...

Thx again, mate.