How to Safely Stop CHKDSK /f of External Hard Drive

zbook · 05 Nov 2020

See this link:

How to Check Drive Health and SMART Status in Windows 10

ACP
wmic diskdrive get model,name,serialnumber,status
wmic /namespace:\\root\wmi path MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus

PS
Get-WmiObject -namespace root\wmi -class MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus

SMART attempts to predict drive failure.

Drives can be used until the terminal event.
They may have performance problems (slow read / write, etc.)

After the important files have been saved you can test the drive for failure status: (this is similar to the test used for warranty replacement)

Run Sea Tools for Windows
long generic test
Post an image of the test result into the thread
SeaTools for Windows |
Seagate
How to use SeaTools for Windows | Seagate Support US

forrestbird · 06 Nov 2020

EdTittel said:

@forrestbird: probably not. The CPU is probably too busy with the chkdsk stuff to pick up keyboard input. You now have the choice of powering off the machine, and risking further damage to the drive (bad) or waiting for DAYS for the chkdsk job to grind through to completion (worse?). No really good choices here, especially if you need to use that PC.
HTH,
--Ed--

Dear Ed and Bree,

I closed my system down to stop the CHKDSK, whereafter I removed the drive from my PC. When I get the time, I will bring it to a professional for recovery. Thank you very much for your help.

EdTittel · 07 Nov 2020

@forrestbird: thanks for sharing your situation with us. Good luck in undertaking your repairs.
Best wishes, too.
--Ed--

ZioJack · 28 Sep 2023

Dear all,

I'm having pretty much the same issue about chkdsk running long.
I've recently done a refresh of an old laptop, changing the drive from HDD to SSD and intalling w10 (all by a technician). I asked the guy to wipe out the HDD as I want to use it as external storage drive.
Tried to format this (a 320 GB WD Scoprio blue) to NTFS, the formatting went bad (a slow one) and the pc was crashing trying to connetting it. Eventually, with disk manager, I could clear it and re-format it properly. I wanted to be sure it was ok so did a check disk from Properties:Tools:Check Disk. That went ok, but it checked just the File System. So I run a cmd: chkdsk /f /r command as I wanted to correct any possible issue done during the formatting (I had to move the pc and HDD while doing, I don't know about vibration responses). Now it's at 3% and saying 70h to run, it does go on little by little, but at each step the expected time goes up.
I did a SMART check following your advices:

How to Safely Stop CHKDSK /f of External Hard Drive-crystaldiskinfo_20230928124511.png

from Power On hours it seems it should have still a long life (considering 5 years life: 40000h).
For the moment it is still running, I don't know if it would be better to leave it fixing bad sectors or do another format. I stress that the disk is still empty, but I don't want to corrupt it with too many operations.
What do you think?
Thank you very much!

ZJ

Bastet · 28 Sep 2023

As the drive is showing caution I would consider it a warning that it is about to fail. I would image the drive immediately if it contains important documents/files & consider purchasing a new drive in the next few months.
There’s a lot of reallocated sectors so that will take time.

Ex_Brit · 28 Sep 2023

If the disk is OK and continues to chkdsk every time you start it usually means the disk didn't shut down normally.
You can tell if a disk is needing checking using the following elevated (Admin) Command Prompt (or Powershell)
fsutil dirty query C: or whatever the disk letter is. To repair a disk structure: chkdsk C: /r
And to stop a disk from doing it: chkntfs /x C: at the mext startup it shouldn't happen.

Bree · 28 Sep 2023

ZioJack said:

Tried to format this (a 320 GB WD Scoprio blue) to NTFS, the formatting went bad (a slow one) .... I did a SMART check following your advices:

from Power On hours it seems it should have still a long life (considering 5 years life: 40000h).
For the moment it is still running, I don't know if it would be better to leave it fixing bad sectors or do another format. I stress that the disk is still empty, but I don't want to corrupt it with too many operations.
What do you think?

Welcome to Ten Forums.

I think your HDD is dying. The Reallocated Sectors Count of 1B(hex) (27 decimal) are sectors that have been found to be bad and been replaced with sectors from a pool of spares. The Current Pending Sector Count of 216(hex) (534 decimal) are potentially weak sectors that are marked for testing and reallocation if they fail.

If you let a full format run to completion then it will test all sectors and reallocate as required. It's testing the bad sectors that inevitably makes for a slow format. Even when done I would not trust this drive with anything important. It's only a matter of time before more sectors become weak.

Berton · 28 Sep 2023

I'd go along with the possibility the drive is failing.

Also, if I may, the computer shown in your profile affirms it being an old computer, Windows 10 Version 1909 is way out of date, released in Sept. 2019. And the version numbers were changed, became year, Half then first or second as in Version 22H2 which is the current but due to get 23H2 soon.

Bree · 28 Sep 2023

Berton said:

I'd go along with the possibility the drive is failing.

Also, if I may, the computer shown in your profile affirms it being an old computer, Windows 10 Version 1909 is way out of date, released in Sept. 2019. And the version numbers were changed, became year, Half then first or second as in Version 22H2 which is the current but due to get 23H2 soon.

Agreed, Windows 1909 is long past end of servicing. Actually MS have said that 22H2 will be the last version of Windows 10, there will be no 23H2.

Microsoft said:

Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10.

Windows 10 version 22H2 end of servicing on October 14, 2025

dalchina · 28 Sep 2023

You can get an intelligible commentary on your drive if you wish to, with assessment of life remaining - use Hard Disk Sentinel.

Hard Disk Sentinel Standard Giveaway License Key Free

Note that you can continuously monitor your disk(s) with that or Crystal Diskinfo (free) - so you get an alert potentially at an early stage.

If you were to use Macrium Reflect for disk imaging regularly, the integrity of all your data is checked each time. That alerted me to the incipient failure of a disk.

It's worth considering how to mitigate potential disasters, and perhaps avoid them.

How to Safely Stop CHKDSK /f of External Hard Drive

Very similar issue with external HDD