How to force a chkdsk on startup

Question

I have a drive that can not be seen by Windows but can be seen by partition software.

How do I force chkdsk to scan this drive on startup and fix the issues that windows is having reading clearly visible drives?

Answer 1

Hi,

If you cannot see the partition in Windows Explorer, it may have no partition letter. Run diskmgmt.msc from the start menu and find the partition. Right click on it, choose Change Drive Letter and Paths, and then manually assign a drive letter to the partition. Then run chkdsk /f with the drive lettter and see if this works.

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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Answer 2

Chkdsk is a Windows command.

When a volume is identified by Windows an administrative command prompt command can be used to mark the volume as dirty.

Marking the volume as dirty forces an autochk after reboot.

If Windows cannot recognize the disk drive nor the volume then the chkdsk command cannot be used to make the drive appear.

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Chkdsk can run on startup when a command is entered with the volume path.

For example: fsutil dirty set W:

(change the drive letter W to the applicable drive letter)

When a volume's dirty bit is set, autochk automatically checks the volume for errors the next time the computer is restarted.

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If the drive does not have a drive letter when booting Windows or booting to Windows Recovery Environment (RE) then an incomplete command will not force an autochk chkdsk scan.

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References:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/fsutil-dirty?source=recommendations

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/autochk

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/fsutil-dirty?source=recommendations

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkdsk?tabs=event-viewer

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