- Dec 20, 2020
- 5
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Tl; dr If a drive is inaccesible after chkdsk /r, would formatting it fix the issue or would there be hidden problems with the drive not immediately apparent?
Thanks very much for any help or advice!
Bit of a long story. Since I bought my current computer from Dell a year ago, I've had my main 2TB hard drive. About weekly I make a clone of it on my 2TB SanDisk SSD as a back up.
When I started my computer on Thursday, the calculator wouldn't work. It would try to start and then automatically close. I tried to reset it to default under Apps & Features, but that didn't work. I then tried uninstalling it and then redownloading from the Microsoft Store. But every time I tried to download the Microsoft Calculator by clicking on "Free," it wouldn't download.
At this point began a series of bad decisions on my part.
I decided I would use my back up hard drive. Basically, I thought I would clone the back up, which didn't have any problems with the calculator, onto my main hard drive using my old laptop and my dual drive docking station.
But the moment I connected both hard drives to my laptop, the Scan & Fix message appeared for both. I did not realize the Scan & Fix was the same as chkdsk, which I know is dangerous to interrupt.
So I clicked Scan & Fix for both drives. Scan & Fix wouldn't start on the SanDisk hard drive, the computer would try to autoplay and that seemed to stop Scan & Fix.
Scan & Fix did start on my main hard drive. But when it seemed to be taking too long, I clicked on cancel. After doing that, it became impossible to access the data on the hard drive.
Similarly, Windows would now sometimes prompt to format the SanDisk drive.
Once, the format prompt didn't appear and I could access the data like normal on the SanDisk.
Seeing that it sometimes worked, unlike my main hard drive which now never worked, I went and connected my SanDisk to my desktop and tried to turn on the computer.
The computer turned on, seeming mostly normal. But I quickly saw problems. The calculator on my taskbar was gone. So was Chrome replaced by like a blank sheet of paper icon? Since the computer was mostly normal, I used this opportunity to copy my data (mostly Word documents from my work, and photos and videos of my family and pets) to another, third hard drive I own.
With my data backed up, I decided I would use my laptop and docking station to run chkdsk /r on my SanDisk. My main hard drive I formatted. If the SanDisk drive could be could be saved, I still thought I could then make a clone of it on my main hard drive, to save time having to reinstall everything. If not, I would format both hard drives and reinstall everything.
I then ran running chkdsk /r on my SanDisk drive. Everything seemsednormal, but during chkdsk (stage 3, I think? I'm not sure) I saw the message "replacing invalid security id with default security id" appear many times for more files than I can count. I have no idea what "replacing invalid security id with default security id" means, and that made me me worry.
When Chkdsk finished, it said this:
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
169518689 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Correcting errors in the Master File Table (MFT) mirror.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
1935688703 KB total disk space.
1256549088 KB in 412556 files.
244620 KB in 87548 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
820235 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
678074760 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
483922175 total allocation units on disk.
169518690 allocation units available on disk.
I don't know what all of this means. 0 KB in bad sectors sounds to me like the hard drive is fine, or at least not failing.
However, when I tried to access the drive itself, and Windows said it isn't accessible. "The parameter is incorrect." I tried again and it said the drive is inaccesible and "Access is denied."
Checking Properties shows 0 bytes on the drive. Disk management shows the partitions as they should be.
So, would formatting it fix the issue or would there be hidden problems with the drive not immediately apparent?
Thanks very much for any help or advice!
Thanks very much for any help or advice!
Bit of a long story. Since I bought my current computer from Dell a year ago, I've had my main 2TB hard drive. About weekly I make a clone of it on my 2TB SanDisk SSD as a back up.
When I started my computer on Thursday, the calculator wouldn't work. It would try to start and then automatically close. I tried to reset it to default under Apps & Features, but that didn't work. I then tried uninstalling it and then redownloading from the Microsoft Store. But every time I tried to download the Microsoft Calculator by clicking on "Free," it wouldn't download.
At this point began a series of bad decisions on my part.
I decided I would use my back up hard drive. Basically, I thought I would clone the back up, which didn't have any problems with the calculator, onto my main hard drive using my old laptop and my dual drive docking station.
But the moment I connected both hard drives to my laptop, the Scan & Fix message appeared for both. I did not realize the Scan & Fix was the same as chkdsk, which I know is dangerous to interrupt.
So I clicked Scan & Fix for both drives. Scan & Fix wouldn't start on the SanDisk hard drive, the computer would try to autoplay and that seemed to stop Scan & Fix.
Scan & Fix did start on my main hard drive. But when it seemed to be taking too long, I clicked on cancel. After doing that, it became impossible to access the data on the hard drive.
Similarly, Windows would now sometimes prompt to format the SanDisk drive.
Once, the format prompt didn't appear and I could access the data like normal on the SanDisk.
Seeing that it sometimes worked, unlike my main hard drive which now never worked, I went and connected my SanDisk to my desktop and tried to turn on the computer.
The computer turned on, seeming mostly normal. But I quickly saw problems. The calculator on my taskbar was gone. So was Chrome replaced by like a blank sheet of paper icon? Since the computer was mostly normal, I used this opportunity to copy my data (mostly Word documents from my work, and photos and videos of my family and pets) to another, third hard drive I own.
With my data backed up, I decided I would use my laptop and docking station to run chkdsk /r on my SanDisk. My main hard drive I formatted. If the SanDisk drive could be could be saved, I still thought I could then make a clone of it on my main hard drive, to save time having to reinstall everything. If not, I would format both hard drives and reinstall everything.
I then ran running chkdsk /r on my SanDisk drive. Everything seemsednormal, but during chkdsk (stage 3, I think? I'm not sure) I saw the message "replacing invalid security id with default security id" appear many times for more files than I can count. I have no idea what "replacing invalid security id with default security id" means, and that made me me worry.
When Chkdsk finished, it said this:
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
169518689 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Correcting errors in the Master File Table (MFT) mirror.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
1935688703 KB total disk space.
1256549088 KB in 412556 files.
244620 KB in 87548 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
820235 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
678074760 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
483922175 total allocation units on disk.
169518690 allocation units available on disk.
I don't know what all of this means. 0 KB in bad sectors sounds to me like the hard drive is fine, or at least not failing.
However, when I tried to access the drive itself, and Windows said it isn't accessible. "The parameter is incorrect." I tried again and it said the drive is inaccesible and "Access is denied."
Checking Properties shows 0 bytes on the drive. Disk management shows the partitions as they should be.
So, would formatting it fix the issue or would there be hidden problems with the drive not immediately apparent?
Thanks very much for any help or advice!
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