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Hello,
I have a 5TB external HDD that I was creating a hash for all the files. I left it overnight and came back the next morning to see it completed. I then click the option to save the hash file and got an error saying "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable", which I find weird given how it just scanned all files in that drive and computed a hash successfully, I restarted PC and on boot up windows said it was repairing the drive.
I used seatools to scan it but aborted the scan because it was taking to long. I then heard it was bad to abort and I might have corrupted something. I then rescanned it and it passed.
I went through a bunch of forums online and I think I've heard that it might still be a good idea to run "chkdsk /r" since Windows file system stuff might be corrupted and seatools doesn't check that.
I'm currently running chkdsk and its going to take a long time. After chkdks complete im going to run a hash check on the files anyway and copy any files with incorrect hashes.
My question is, would it simply be better and/or faster to force shutdown PC to abort chkdsk, run a full format, then copy over the contents form a backup? Otherwise I have to wait, run a hash check, then copy over potentially alot of files? If chkdsk repairs successfully, should I trust it?
Its stage 4 at the moment, I've heard it's safe to abort stages 4 and 5.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
Hi, I am Dave, I will help you with this.
You are correct, it is safe to stop the check disk operation in stages 4 and 5, but not in 1 - 3, that will not cause any problem on the drive.
I think the quickest option would be to cancel the check disk, format the drive and copy the data back to that drive to ensure a perfect copy of the files are on that drive and remove any corruption from that drive file structure.
Ahh another question. I cancelled it and quickly ran "chkdsk" (no flags) and it says 0 KB in bad sectors. Should I be safe or is a long format recommended? The "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" did give me a scare.
Thanks for the speedy reply!
