2

I noticed my D: drive was marked as dirty and some folders were coming up as corrupted, so I recovered as much data as possible, and then scheduled a chkdsk /r /f on next restart, and I've been here since Thursday (it progressed a bit throughout Wednesday):

I now need to urgently access files on my C: drive, but don't know if I should interrupt this process with a forced power off.

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago

If chkdsk has been running for multiple days, your drive is fucked.

Cancelling it could make it worse, but we're talking a gut stab and losing a finger vs just being gut stabbed.

Don't have that drive powered on more than absolutely necessary. If it's a HDD in a laptop, don't move it if you don't need to, and never while powered on.

For the best chance of getting as much as possible off it: Get access to another computer and make yourself a USB stick with some live-bootable Linux on it (so it runs all from the USB and RAM and the HDD is only in use when copying stuff off). Get another drive of at least the same size, and use a low level disk copying tool to copy the busted drive to your new one. Most of these tools will overwrite whatever is already on the destination disk. I think dd in Linux will work for this, but it's been over a decade since I last had to do this, so best to do some research on your own.

[-] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

I think your d drive is fucked.

F

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 0 points 2 weeks ago

If you can afford the time and it appears to be progressing, let it ride.

Either it is recovering further files which you can quickly remove and save elsewhere or it is busy scuffing the disk into an unrecognizable state. If you have all you need then it doesn't matter if you let it run. I wouldn't trust it after this.

[-] naticus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Well unfortunately if it's the bearings dying, it continuing to run will likely overheat it and you risk locking it entirely. I've had to freeze a drive before scanning it and backing up, but it's only about 50% successful.

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, that would be another theoretical possibility OP will need to weigh.

this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
2 points (100.0% liked)

PC Master Race

18419 readers
5 users here now

A community for PC Master Race.

Rules:

  1. No bigotry: Including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
  2. Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
  3. No NSFW content.
  4. No Ads / Spamming.
  5. Be thoughtful and helpful: even with ‘stupid’ questions. The world won’t be made better or worse by snarky comments schooling naive newcomers on Lemmy.

Notes:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS