Stopping CheckDisk in Win7

[Pimpom]

Not sure if this should be posted here or in the Storage section. Anyway, here goes.

Can Check Disk be safely stopped while it's running in Windows 7 that's already booted up normally? Practically all my search results are about Check Disk during startup.

At the moment I'm concerned about stopping it while it's being run with only "Automatically fix file system errors" selected. I'll explain the circumstances later as needed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[R_1]

if windows is booted up then you are not scanning the boot drive. the boot drive c: can only be scanned before windows loads.
if you are scanning an extra drive there is no problem cancelling the scan midway through, if there were any chance to damage the drive there would not be a stop/cancel button.
I just started and stopped a scan on my D: drive all is good.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @Pimpom!

Keep in mind that interrupting the chkdsk process is not recommended until it completes by itself and there's no Since you have already booted into Windows and you feel the need to stop the process, do it at your own risk! There's no safe way to cancel the procedure and you will be risking damaging some of your data, instead of letting it run its course.
How big is the HDD you are scanning with it? Usually the larger the capacity, the more time it would take to finish.
If you took the chance to cancel it already, make sure you run the HDD manufacturer's brand-specific diagnostic utility to check up on the health and SMART status of the drive. These tools run different kinds of tests, than those in chkdsk. So, if you are concerned about the health of the HDD itself, you should always refer to the drive diagnostic software first. I'd also make sure you have all your data backed up to another storage device before troubleshooting it. Having multiple copies of your precious files is the surest way to avoid potential data loss.

Hope this helps you.
Keep us posted with the troubleshooting!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Pimpom]

Thanks for the quick replies. But the two so far seem to contradict each other. Here's what happened -

Config: Win7U x64, Phenom II x4 955 at stock speed, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB + 500GB. Normal boot time is 28-29 secs from the moment I push the power button to the time the Desktop icons are displayed.

Two days ago, my computer seemed to get stuck during the "Starting Windows" stage. The Windows logo was not pulsating as usual and the disk activity LED remained dark. I powered down after several minutes.

The 1TB drive has Windows installed on it too, for use in situations like this. It booted after spending about 10 minutes at "Starting Windows".

Then I disconnected the two HDDs, booted normally with the SSD and used it like that for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, with all drives connected again, it took about an hour to boot up but otherwise behaved normally except when the 500GB unit was involved. I could open random files and folders in this drive, albeit with hiccups when opening large files. Regrettably, I didn't do a systematic accessing of the contents of all 8 partitions in the unit.

I tried testing the HDDs with HDTune. The 1TB piece was fine, but the benchmark test failed to start on the 500GB unit (I don't remember the exact error message).

Next, I tried to run CheckDisk on each partition in turn, starting with what used to be the boot partition in WinXP. Each time Checkdisk quietly exited after several seconds without doing anything or giving an error message. Regrettably again, I don't remember if I tried all 8 partitions (constant interruption by visitors).

Later in the day, I could run Checkdisk on the last partition (~80GB) without surface scan and it's been running ever since. I monitor it by periodically taking measurements on screenshots of the progress bar.

While Checkdisk was in the "file records" phase, the test advanced at the rate of about 0.55% per hour, indicating that it would take more than a week to complete. Power outages are common here, occasionally for hours, which my UPS can't cope with. This is what brought out my concern about having to stop the operation. And this is just one 80GB partition!!

Things looked up a bit when Checkdisk entered the "index entries" phase after about 16 hours and progress speed increased to nearly 5% per hour. Total elapsed time is about 26 hours now and overall progress is at ~59%.

Whew. That's a long post. To those who took the time to read it through, thanks for your patience. And yes, I intend to run Seagate's tools later - both HDDs are Barracudas. SMART showed 6 reallocated sectors before I started Checkdisk. I know that 2 of these were caused by a severe power fluctuation years ago.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, @Pimpom!

If your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic utility showed bad sectors, running CHKDSK is all the more dangerous because it will lock those bad sectors and it could also corrupt your data if the HDD itself is out of spare sectors. That's exactly why it's highly recommended to perform full backups before tampering with your storage. Using diagnostic tools will help you determine if there are any hardware-specific issues with the hard drives. Whereas Chkdsk is mostly concerned with the integrity of the file system data structure. Either way, whenever you run Chksdsk, you should always let it finish.

However, It does sound like one of your hard drives (the 500 GB one) is definitely causing the boot up issue and your whole system to lag. My recommendation would be to plug the 1 TB HDD with the booting SSD and see how the system will perform then. You should also consider replacing the SATA cable and swapping the SATA port where the problematic drive is connected to. If that doesn't help, I'd advise you to backup all important files from it and consider replacing it.

SuperSoph_WD

 

[Pimpom]

Sound advice. But Chkdsk is already running on the last 80GB partition and I don't want to risk interrupting it (which was the whole point of this thread). Total elapsed time is now 47.5 hours and the progress bar is full, but the message has been stuck at "1007616 USN bytes processed" for about 3hrs now. What does this mean?

I've been using the 500GB unit for more than 7 years now and the 1TB drive was intended to replace it. I copied an estimated ~80% of data to the newer drive last year, but lack of time and subsequent bouts of laziness kept me from completing the transfer.

I can still copy small files of up to ~100KB from the 500GB drive - very slowly - even while Chkdsk is running except from the partition locked by Chkdsk, but it balks at larger files. The SSD and the 1TB unit continue to behave normally. Browsing, playing music and videos, CAD sims, etc still work as usual without any lag while Chkdsk is running on the 500GB drive.

 

[Pimpom]

54 hours since Chkdsk started. About 9 hrs since the progress bar was full and "1007616 USN bytes processed" was first displayed. Nothing has changed since then. Computer continues to do everything smoothly unless the 500GB HDD's involved.

 

[hang-the-9]

That 500 GB drive is bad, if you are in Windows, you can cancel the check.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

54 hours since Chkdsk started. About 9 hrs since the progress bar was full and "1007616 USN bytes processed" was first displayed. Nothing has changed since then. Computer continues to do everything smoothly unless the 500GB HDD's involved.

@Pimpom, get that 500 GB HDD out of your system, otherwise it would continue to influence your PC performance. The fact that the drive is already bad, canceling chkdsk shouldn't do any additional harm to it, really. However, if you keep this drive in your rig, it would continue trying to read the 500 GB drive and disturb all other processes.
If you need that data, try to recover it using some third-party utility AT YOUR OWN RISK. Nobody can really determine whether it would be successful, especially if there are already bad sectors on the HDD. If the data is really important and you don't want to take that risk, then please refer to a professional data recovery company for assistance. They would be your best bet on getting any of those files back safely.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Pimpom]

Chkdsk had finally stopped by itself by the time I got up today, some 65 hrs after starting. It hasn't made any difference in accessibility to the drive. I can still see all my files and folders, but opening or copying anything but very small files is still impracticably slow. Of course Chkdsk was checking only one partition. At least I didn't have to force it to stop and risk causing even more data corruption.

I'm preparing to run Seagate's Seatools from a bootdisk rather in Windows. There are still some files on it, maybe a couple of GBs, that I'd hate to lose. I won't lose any sleep over the rest of the 50 or so GBs that I hadn't yet copied to the 1TB drive earlier.

Thanks for your continued interest.

 

[Pimpom]

Hooray! My computer's healthy again, including the 500GB drive. It was the cable after all. I intended to check it as soon as the computer was powered down, as also suggested by SuperSoph_WD, but was preoccupied with the Chkdsk issue.

Even when Chkdsk released the drive after nearly three full days, I wasn't eager to power down because, if the culprit was not the cable, there was a strong possibility that it would be even more difficult to boot up again to run other tests. I have other computers but no other long-backup UPS and I need this one all the time. But I eventually shut the computer down, pulled out and reinserted the data and power cables to the drive. To isolate the problem, I didn't touch the other drives. And it worked.

I've never liked SATA cables even though I'm aware of their increased bandwidth over PATA. My main profession is electronics, but there was a period of more than a decade when I worked on hundreds of computers - assembling and troubleshooting them. When SATA drives came out, I received reports from local people that they don't last very long. I reserved judgment until I'd accumulated enough personal experience with them. Then I began cursing them.

I soon had enough evidence that the cables, specifically the connector contacts, were causing all kinds of problems. Erratic operation was common. CRC errors pile up. The red ones without a locking mechanism that were supplied with motherboards at the time were particularly unreliable. So were the power supply adaptors. The yellow ones with a lock are better, but are still more prone to intermittent faults than PATA connectors IMO.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

I'm very glad to hear this, @Pimpom!
The issue seems to have been resolved, which is great!
Indeed, there are often issues linked to a loose SATA cable or a failed one, but SATA does have a lot of advantages when compared to PATA. Technology advances all the time and the demand for speed, especially when it comes to computers, is bigger than ever. This is where SATA has the upper hand.
However, I can't disagree that a simple failed SATA connection could give quite the headaches and data-loss scares.

Best of luck! Hope we were helpful.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Pimpom]

Thanks. For the record, I'm not disputing the advantages of SATA over PATA. It's just that I wish they'd given more thought to the design of so crucial a component as the cable connector.