Not sure if stuck at adding bad clusters to the BC file running chkdsk /r

[Solnfected]

Hello everyone,
yesterday one of my drives became unreachable and windows was telling me to format it. So, I ran chkdsk /r during startup, and it took around 6 hours to run the command, and now, it's been hanging on this screen for the last 20 hours:

So, at this point I'm not sure if it's stuck or just normally doing it's task. I'm concerned, because what it says is that, it's trying to copy something but I'm not sure if there's enough free space on the drive(I'm not sure how the command works or what it does, tbh).

Should I restart my PC, or should I keep waiting?

Btw, it's a 4TB Seagate SSHD drive and I'm running windows 7. If necessary I can provide further information.
I'd really appreciate if anyone could help me out of this.

 

[JaredDM]

That seems pretty bad to me. It's showing around 250Gb of bad clusters, probably not accurate.

I'd suspect the drive may have failed mid-stream while running chkdisk. It's more common than you might think as chkdisk is really stressing on the drive.

I hope you have a backup of the data.

 

[Solnfected]

That seems pretty bad to me. It's showing around 250Gb of bad clusters, probably not accurate.

I'd suspect the drive may have failed mid-stream while running chkdisk. It's more common than you might think as chkdisk is really stressing on the drive.

I hope you have a backup of the data.

I'm just surprised, because I've been using computers since '94 and never had a failing drive in my life.

I have no backup, but I'd only be sad for a couple of days if I lose all my data on the drive, since half of it's is porn and the other half is TV series. But, the thing is, I installed some windows security update and restarted, then it suggested me to run chkdsk during boot(out of nowhere), but I was in a rush and since it's not the boot drive, I skipped it, thinking that I'd run chkdsk inside the OS. Then I opened a pdf file from the drive and then tried to go into a folder and it didn't let me, saying it was corrupted. So I tried to open every single directory, but everything was working fine, except for that one folder. So, I tried to open that folder again and the drive went nuts and told me to format it. So I scheduled a chkdsk on startup and restarted, and here I am.

The only question is, should I restart and see how it behaves in the OS, or should I wait at least for an another 24h to see if it's going to do something on it's own?

And is there a way to know, if it was my fault or windows' or just bad luck? Because besides me never facing sth like this before, this is an 8 month old drive(fairly new to me).

 

[JaredDM]

If you don't care that much about the data, then just try to boot up and see what happens. You might still be able to clone the drive onto another drive by following this ddrescue guide: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

Likely the drive has bad sectors, and maybe now has corrupted firmware from all of chkdisk's brutality.

Keep in mind that as drive capacity increases, so does failure rates. The data is so much more dense today than back in '94. This means it's proportionately smaller on the platter surface. So a tiny scratch or nick that previously would only create a single bad sector on a 40Gb drive, will now create hundreds of bad sectors on a 4Tb (4Tb has 100 sectors in the same physical space that a 40Gb held 1 sector)

 

[Solnfected]

If you don't care that much about the data, then just try to boot up and see what happens. You might still be able to clone the drive onto another drive by following this ddrescue guide: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

Likely the drive has bad sectors, and maybe now has corrupted firmware from all of chkdisk's brutality.

Keep in mind that as drive capacity increases, so does failure rates. The data is so much more dense today than back in '94. This means it's proportionately smaller on the platter surface. So a tiny scratch or nick that previously would only create a single bad sector on a 40Gb drive, will now create hundreds of bad sectors on a 4Tb (4Tb has 100 sectors in the same physical space that a 40Gb held 1 sector)

Thank you so much for the rescue guide and your explanatory example about the scaling between past and today's technology, it didn't occur to me to take that approach.

I'm going to wait for an another 12-24 hours to see what happens, otherwise I'm gonna restart and take whatever comes out of it, as you suggested. Unfortunately I don't have any free space to clone the drive even if it's possible to retrieve some possibly lost data, but I'll keep that in mind for future.

Besides everything, just assuming the actual drive itself had no scratches on it. Regardless me running chkdsk, is it possible(doesn't necessarily have to be likely) that, firmware or something else on the drive getting damaged just by normal usage, because of windows?(I don't know if the OS itself can possibly cause that, without user failure.)

Thank you again for your trouble!

 

[Solnfected]

Update:

Just couldn't take it anymore, and restarted. 3TB lost. I'm gonna try to retrieve at least some of it.

 

[JaredDM]

Just out of curiosity was it a model ST3000DM001 Seagate drive? Those had so many failures they're actually in a class action suit right now over failing to meet their listed specs.

 

[Solnfected]

Just out of curiosity was it a model ST3000DM001 Seagate drive? Those had so many failures they're actually in a class action suit right now over failing to meet their listed specs.

No, I have ST4000DX001, is there any known issues about this drive? And I'm actually trying to decide on buying a new drive, could you help me out choosing one of the models mentioned below, and I'm also open to other suggestions. I'll only be using the drive for archiving(i.e. video, audio and image files).

I'm considering these right now;
ST4000DM000
ST4000DM005
ST4000DX001
ST4000VN000
ST5000DM002

Thank you!
Update: That's ridiciluos, every single store is out of drives.. Damn you capitalism

 

[JaredDM]

That's not as bad as some other Seagate drives. Definitely, avoid anything that has *DM* in the model. Especially if in the 3Tb sizes.

For a 3.5" drive go with an HGST of any model and you should be good. Toshiba is good too, but most of the 3.5" ones are really HGST anyway (except for the newest ones).