[Help] - windows won't stop checking drive for errors

[bobthedinosaur]

i dropped one of my external HDDs a while back.... sh*t myself and error checked it with everything i got including windows checkdisk, but windows insisted on rebooting in order to do the check before windows boots up completely

all the checks i did came up with nothing, the drive is absolutely 100% fine, BUT! windows won't stop scheduling checks for the drive!! this makes it impossible for my Diskeeper defrag software to run effectively as it can't fiddle with the drive till windows has finished doing its thing, which is never!

how do i get the drive check 'unscheduled' so Diskeeper can do its job and i don't have to go thru the blue screen error check before windows starts up EVERY TIME!?

thanks in advance!

Title Edited - Please follow the forum rules from now on

-- Martin L

[trickytwista]

maybe since you dropped it, it maybe has damaged the drive... what brand is it? also can you get the brands website up and download drive fitness tester?

[bobthedinosaur]

it's quite an old drive, i think it's a WD 80GB, the type before WD started making crappy drives...

the drive definately doesn't have any errors on it, all the data is still fine and every drive checking app i could find said that the drive is fine, i think it's something more along the line of windows stupidity

[tbs]

bobthedinosaur, sounds like the drive has it's 'dirty bit' set. to find out have a look here. I can't remember if fsutil is on the xp cd in support tools or not, but you could google it.

I think the reg info below will sort it, (I had this filed away because I came across your problem some time ago). Obvoiusly if there is a problem with the drive, resetting the dirty bit is not a good idea - read as - don't blame me!

reg info;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\

In session manager (to the right) I created a Multistring Value and named it BootExecute.

In value data I put:

BootExecute : REG_MULTI_SZ : autocheck autochk *

My reg has this value 'autochk *' - so check yours and see what it says and try changing to the above.

google drive dirty bit to get more infos

tbs

[tarquel]

Good advice tbs

..and make sure you try the WD diag tool from their website - give it all the tests that the diag tool has [except the ones that will wipe your data hehe] if you havent already bobthedinosaur

Good luck

Nath

[bobthedinosaur]

ok cool thanks

i tried the WD util, it came up clean, drive is fine

then i checked the drive for the dirty bit and it turns out the dirty was never set ....???

rebooted the pc, no blue checkdisk screen

ran cmd, ran chkdsk, chkdks says it has to unmount the volume in order to do the test... ??? (USB drive by the way)

right now it's doing stage 4 of 5 and it stuck at 0 percent but the drive light is flashing so something is going on

will check back here if attempt is unsuccessful

[RJARRRPCGP]

right now it's doing stage 4 of 5 and it stuck at 0 percent but the drive light is flashing so something is going on

will check back here if attempt is unsuccessful

Do you hear repeated clicking when the above is occuring? If it is, you have the dreaded click of death! That's unfortunately common with Western Digital HDDs. Then the HDD's bad!

Edited February 20, 2006 by RJARRRPCGP