"Scanning and Repairing" - No progress in 15 hours

Question

I was backing up my files to an external HDD when this error message showed up "can't read from the source file or disk". Some random youtube video suggested me to run a error checking tool under drive properties. So I used the scanning and repair option. The progress bar moved to about 20% after 10 minutes and hasn't moved any further in the past 15 hours. Pressing 'cancel' doesnt seem to work either.

Whats is happening here?

How do I stop it?

img: https://ibb.co/FJ0Snx6

Answer 1

Hi Rohin

I am Dave, an Independent Advisor, I will help you with this . . .

You are using that Repair Drive form inside Windows 10, it is safe to stop that process, no harm will come to your drive, however, if that is stalled, then that would indicate a problem on your external drive, which it cannot fix . . .

Shut your PC down, wait a few seconds, then start it again and check to see if you can access that drive . . .

The best option is to run a full check Disk on that drive

Click your Start Button, then just type cmd

From the resulting menu, right click Command Prompt and choose 'Run as Administrator'

Paste this commend into Command Prompt and press Enter:

chkdsk F: /f /r

Wait for that command to complete, that will take a while . . .

Please provide a screenshot of the results of running that scan . . .

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply. I have yet to run 'chkdsk' but as of now, I'm able to read the files on the disk. But anable to write anything to it.

If I run a chkdsk, how long can I expect it to run? It is a 4TB HDD with a single partition.

Answer 3

Hi Rohin

Check Disk on a 4TB drive could take 2+ hours to complete, it is best done when you will not need that drive for a while, or at the end of the day . . .

Answer 4

النت ما يشتغل بسرعه

Answer 5

Thanks Dave. Will run chkdsk a little later in the day.

But meanwhile I want to make a list of all files on the disk for safekeeping. I know  "dir /s /b > FileList.txt" will work but since I am unable to write anything to that disk now, I would like to create the text file elsewhere. Is there a way to do that?