Windows 10: chkdsk not progressing after several hours

My friend just built a PC for me. While we waited for an SSD to arrive, he installed windows on another of my hard drives so I could begin to copy files to another drive. I placed all of my files and many more on an 18 year old external drive temporarily, and although it was very slow, they all copied. Now, when trying to put large files ex. 400MB onto a drive, it said it couldn't be performed because of an I/O error.


We tried a few solutions to no avail. Then he told me to go into the command prompt and type:


chkdsk external drive name /f /r /x


I pressed enter. It began to say:


Windows replaced bad clusters in file file nameof name null.


This showed up several types with different file names, and went to 3 percent completed fairly slowly. When I returned 10-11 hours, nothing had changed.


As I was writing this, it went to 4 percent completed, and the "Windows replaced bad clusters" and so on line continued.


I know I should not use that drive anymore, I didn't even realize how old it was, and I plan on getting rid of it when everything is off. Should I be worried with just how slow the progress is? If so, how should I fix it without completely ruining the external drive or anything else? I am prepared to lose some, but I would hate to lose everything forever.


Thank you.

:)

 

chkdsk c: /F

It might be an error on the drive. We suggests that you follow the troubleshooting steps below:

• Run Disk Cleanup utility to clear your junk files.
• Open an elevated CMD type sfc /scannow and hit Enter to run the System File Checker.
  
• Once the scan is completed, restart your computer. Remember to exit ChkDsk
  during boot.
• Next, again open CMD as admin type
  Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and hit Enter to repair the Windows image.
• Now see if ChkDsk able to complete the scan.

Note: Before doing the steps, make sure you save a back up of your files.

Let us know how it goes.

 

Chkdsk thru command prompt on external drive - can i safely cancel?

Sorry, but cancelling chkdsk on the early stages of the disk check might brick the disk(As you said 4%, that is a very early stage)

I suggest you to wait for ~12 hours and see the progress.

 

chkdsk stuck for hours

Hi Joe,

To better assist you with your concern, we'd like to know more information:

• Did you make any changes to your PC?
• Have you already tried to perform a hard reboot and try to use the chkdsk again?

We look forward to your response.