chkdsk returning 2 unspecified errors

Question

Hi my friend's hard drive is having some major issues and I have been trying to fix the drive. The drive is assessible after 30-40 minutes of read time and does contain files in it. Autoplay also returns that there is an issue with the drive and prompts me to fix the drive through the scan and repair feature, but that has not worked so far.

I researched online and have tried using the chkdsk function on command prompt. Everything goes well until stage 3 where the errors occur as sfollows:

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...

An unspecified error occurred (736463686b2e6378 a17).

An unspecified error occurred (6e74667363686b2e 17b4).

Anyone knows a solution to fixing this drive? We want to ensure the files in it are not deleted as well. Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

My only suggestion is if your friend has backups, full (long) format the drive, then clean install everything starting with Windows. And see how that works.

Otherwise, and especially if your friend has no backups or it still works poorly after the above, just buy a new drive and use that. Then, getting the computer up and running again with a clean Windows install, attempt to recover stuff from that drive.

chkdsk can only attempt to correct things. It just can't fix everything :)

You can see what someone else suggests. Personally, I wouldn't try anything else here as it will all be likely to have issues, end in failure, or total file loss (besides attempting recovery or paying for recovery specialist) if its not all lost already.

If you want to minimize time and risk then simply skip to the second one and buy a new drive. Its the way it is. After, can always use the current drive as a secondary drive or even an extra backup drive if its data isn't necessary and full format works and its more reliable after.