How to Safely Stop CHKDSK /f of External Hard Drive

Dear TenForums,

I have been unable to access my external harddrive for some time, why I chose to run CHKDSK /f. Unfortunately, I believe that the drive is fully corrupted since the check has now lasted 24 hours and is only at 2 percent (Please see screen dump from promt). I have been searching the inter-webs to find a suitable/safe solution to end the check, however, I cannot seem to find a conclusive answer. It is a 1 TB external harddrive with family photos and other nostalgic items. Therefore, I would like to do as little damage as possible to ensure that the files are salvageable.

My question is: How can I as safely as possible end the CHKDSK /f on my external harddrive?

Windows 10 Home Version 1909

Use CrystalDiskInfo to view SMART health report of the external hard drive.

CrystalDiskInfo – Crystal Dew World

FreeBooter said:

Use CrystalDiskInfo to view SMART health report of the external hard drive.

CrystalDiskInfo – Crystal Dew World

Dear FreeBooter,

Thank you so much for your reply.

Please see the screen dump below. Can you help me make sense of it?

Şimdiden çok teşekkür ederim.

Interrupting chkdsk is not recommended.
However, canceling or interrupting chkdsk should not leave the volume any more corrupt than it was before chkdsk was run.
Running chkdsk again checks and should repair any remaining corruption on the volume.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ommands/chkdsk

EdTittel said:

You can use CTRL-C to pause chkdsk, then do a restart or shutdown to clear the process. See this article and its warnings about potential consequences: How to safely stop CHKDSK on Windows 10 - Windows 10 - Pureinfotech Forums (sorry I couldn't find a TF tutorial on this topic. If anybody else knows about such a resource @Brink @NavyLCDR @Bree please chime in.)
--Ed--

Dear @EdTittel,

I have tried pausing the check by tapping CTRL+C, however this is not pausing it. Am I doing something wrong?

forrestbird said:

Please see the screen dump below. Can you help me make sense of it?

You have 738 (2E2 hex) Reallocated Sectors and a further 412 (19C hex) awaiting reallocation. A reallocated sector is NOT a bad sector, it is a weak sector that needed multiple retries to read it successfully, and the data has now been rewritten to another good sector drawn from a pool of spares. The pending sectors likewise are not bad (yet) but are weak and need several retries to read the correct data. At the moment all your data should be recoverable.


I would stop the Chkdsk now before it wears out any further sectors, then make an image of the drive with Macrium Reflect Free. This may take some time, as there will be many retries to read some of the sectors. But if Macrium completes successfully you can be confident it has copied all your files intact. By default Macrium will abort a backup if it finds an unreadable sector.

If Macrium finds a permanently unreadable sector, then it is possible to re-run the backup and tell it to ignore bad sectors. This will complete the backup but it may contain some corrupted files.