Chkdsk

shayser

A 1TB external USB drive I use to backup up 10 PCs was showing write delay errors so I started chkdsk. The ntbackup files are around 20gb each. I knew it would take a long time, but was hoping 24 hours would be enough. It flew through stages 1 - 3, as it does, but it's at 0% for stage 4 (verifying file data) for about 5 hours. I don't want to break the check, but need the drive ready for Monday evening backups. Is there anything else I can do?

Capt'n Midnight

TBH I'd get another external drive regardless

not good to interupt a drive check on any OS because you can be sure if there are any repairs there will be writing to the file tables and interrupting that is almost certain to lead to corruption, that's why chkdsk usually gives you a couple of seconds to cancel on startup

even if chkdsk works you should have a nagging doubt in the back of your mind that something isn't 100%

doesn't matter whether the problem is hardware or software you need more than one backup in case someone drops the drive when you need it for disaster recovery or more likely if the drive becomes corrupt when it's unplugged before it's safe to eject

desktop drives 3.5" are less suitable for carrying around than 2.5" laptop drives - lower g rating and all that


you can still use that drive in the rotation if it passes a surface scan and has no more errors but might be worth considering retiring it or using it for non critical data transfers

Samp21

Hi, firstly I'd be inclined to agree with the captain on getting a second drive for your backups. Secondly if it was me i'd use something to check the surface of the drive, 2 tools I use myself regulary are

IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT

HDDScan

http://hddscan.com/

shayser

Hi, thanks for the replies.

Chkdsk eventually finished without any errors.

It's a seagate drive and passed all of the tests in SeaTools.

This is the error:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 06/11/2010
Time: 05:40:45
User: N/A
Computer: RGL00
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 04 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80 ....3..€
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 8e 00 bc 00 00 00 00 .Ž.¼....
0028: 06 cf 5e 03 00 00 00 00 .Ï^.....
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 84 02 00 00 00 @..„....

0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 f0 16 89 a8 5f c4 89 .ð.‰¨_ĉ
0058: 00 00 00 00 38 2b 89 88 ....8+‰ˆ
0060: 00 00 00 00 47 00 5e 00 ....G.^.
0068: 2a 00 00 5e 00 47 00 00 *..^.G..
0070: 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0078: 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0a p.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 04 02 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

The error was reported 15 times between 5:40 and 22:15.

It's under warranty but reading what Seagate say on their site, it must fail one of the SeaTools tests to qualify for a replacement.

Two different machines give the same error.

I'm running HDDScan now.

It's been sacked from backup duties. Can't afford slackers like that in this recession.