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CHKDSK and its uselness ?


vinifera

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here's a story, and its true...
I plugged in my USB stick, then "ejected it" (properly)
later I plugged it in again, and BOOOM ! I got nice "corrupted drive / format it" error

the only logical thing came to mind is to run chkdsk and this is what i get:

s33ji0.png

so what the hell do i do now ?

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Hi vinifera:)

What I always do when in the situation that  nothing works and definitely evey time Windows says it needs to format the drive....

Find a linux computer...if you haven't one of those around then it might be worth creating  a live liux cd and booting from that to test the usb....

Most often than not if Windows wants to format a drive then linux will open it and you can back the files up and then reformat the drive and try connecting to Windows again....

bookie32

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I have had this occasionally happen to me. Usually it's just a faulty Windows attempt to mount the disk. On every occasion just pull out the disk and, usually, on the second or third attempt at reinserting the USB plug the drive starts to work again.

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I agree with that ^.

I have one Sandisk flash drive that very, very occasionally, seemingly randomly, goes rogue and reports as just a generic drive volume rather than its given ID and if I try to open it will report as either empty or corrupted and do I want to reformat it. This happens most typically (2 times out of 3) after I've unmounted the drive (correctly) and re-plugged it in later.

In these cases I've found it can also affect the whole system, as if it is trying to mount the volume. No task is shown in Task Manager and I can't tell what process it might be that is doing that. Rebooting and everything else is slowed down to a snail pace because Windows can not stop whatever the process is either but it does eventually reboot if you wait long enough. But that does not fix the problem.

Solution: only a full shutdown works and even then there is a good chance the flash drive LED will remain on if the PC is still connected to the mains supply. If you restart in that state the problem will remain. But once the LED is off and residual current is dissipated, re-mount the drive, restart and so far every time this has happened (3 times in the last 2 years) the drive is back to normal, correct ID and all content restored.

I'm not saying that will help in this case but if you mount the drive before shutting down and do a full restart as described it might work.      

Edited by WalksInSilence
typo, added info
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8 hours ago, vinifera said:

nah, this needed full data recovery
both $MFT and $MFTMirr were damaged ... stupid POS winblows .... !!!

does this happen on Linux as well ???

Hard to say because of the result you received after running chkdsk....

I agree in part with what the guys have said....sometimes when I get "need to format drive" error I would just shut down Windows and restart it with the USB connected..and it would work no problems....

I can guarantee the fact that in all cases of this IF I removed the USB from the Windows computer not wishing to open it and tried it in another Windows computer it always works flawlessly....

I now don't use chkdsk in such situations but remove the drive and as said connect to a Linux computer.....only time this didn't work is when I have had a failing USB or failing external drive I was testing...

OK not saying you should need to do this but if I have a USB that continues to have problems on a particular computer then one has to start looking elsewhere for the problems... BUT I have one such USB that on a regular basis comes up "need to format drive" error on one particular computer and I have run countless tests on the computer and not found a problem?! Go figure!

Also in this situation one has to start wondering about whether there is a problem with the USB that Windows is picking up now and then?

Not everyone has a second Windows computer lying around to test the USB on.....or even as I mentioned earlier a Linux computer available...that is why as soon as I get the "need to format drive" error I connect to a Linux computer...back up the files and reformat and return the files and Windows never has had a problem reading the USB after that....

I will also point out that the USB that has this problem on a regular basis is getting on a bit and even though countless tests have not shown a problem....something must be causing the gliche.....

So....I still recommend...If you haven't a second computer, or no Linux computer....create a live media like Ubuntu and once started check the drive as stated above...there are a ton of other options like a live Gparted Linux partition cd...which I use a lot...

I know that there others here with far more technical experience that can chip in and give other perspectives.....

 

bookie32

 

Sorry, should have also mentioned the fact that I have this USB that continues to cause problems....obviously I have a back up of these files and a new USB when it gives up the ghost....:buehehe: Just a tight old git that likes to get the max out of equipment.....

Edited by bookie32
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chkdsk is useful to get certain file system structures back in order if they were corrupted, though it can't ensure data integrity. There are also cases when TestDisk fails. Never had problems with USB thumb drives unless the one in question was actually faulty.

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well I guess both tools would fix the issue if MFT mirror file wasn't damaged aswell, but it was...
what annoys me most that this all fiasco happened when i always use "safe remove" ...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Recently experienced the same issue. I was trying to boot one of OSes I have on the USB flash drive and it failed. Plugging the drive in a running Windows machine showed it as unformatted. Could access the data from Linux, TestDisk showed invalid boot sector and some unimportant files were corrupted. I could probably avoid reformatting if I knew the correct numbers for drive geometry (they were different than after format). At the end, I also had to change drive's unique ID with diskpart because it apparently changed to the exact same one my laptop's disk has, so Windows refused to mount it.

I'm certain the actual cause was loose connection. If you even slightly touch the drive so it moves just a little to the left or right when plugged in, it can lose power. That's how my laptop's ports are and the fronts ones on my desktop aren't much better.

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On 5/13/2019 at 1:25 AM, vinifera said:

well I guess both tools would fix the issue if MFT mirror file wasn't damaged aswell, but it was...
what annoys me most that this all fiasco happened when i always use "safe remove" ...

Only for the record, UNlike what most people thinks, the $MFTmirr is pretty much useless as it is the mirror of only the first 4 (or 8) records of the $MFT.

https://flatcap.org/linux-ntfs/ntfs/files/mftmirr.html

jaclaz

 

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