I have encountered a situation I have never seen before. I recently bought an Seagate One Touch 5TB external HDD, and to ensure it would store data properly, I tried to run chkdsk. However before that, I have observed the following:
- I tried to read the preloaded contents (originally came formatted in exFAT if I recall correctly), but I could not read the file contents. I could load the file list though. Rebooting fixed this.
- Opening "Create and format hard disk partitions" gets stuck. The window stays completely empty. It was fine in Linux, and that is where I formatted the disk with NTFS.
- I have formatted it to NTFS hoping that would fix it, especially on Windows. Occasionally, if I try to create a file or a folder, I got I/O device error. When I do get them, the following happened:
- CrystalDiskInfo did not find the disk.
- Right-clicking on "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" did nothing.
- If I try to turn PC off, it got stuck in "Powering off..." screen.
This has happened multiple times. I tried disconnecting the drive and plugging it back in (I had to forcefully shut down Windows when it got stuck there). The problem occasionally reappeared. Sometimes it was fine, sometimes it was not.
After a number of rebooting and replugging the disk, it became accessible. I ran chkdsk after that. However, during stage 5 of chkdsk, it got stuck. I'm not talking about the check taking too long, I expected it to take a whole day since the disk is 5TB big. The problem is that it progressed up to 24% just fine in 3 hours, and got stuck there. The progress was increasing, but it was so slow that the total progress percentage stayed at 24% for over 8 hours, so I could not complete the test. Online search tells me various results regarding the potential cause of this, between bad sectors and chkdsk issue.
Overall, it didn't look good for the disk. Problem is, I forgot to take screenshots of all of above. I realised this when I was filing a request for getting a replacement. Naturally, I tried to redo all of above.
None of the problems have appeared. I have not used the disk between then. Couple of small files and folders were created to see if IO errors would happen or not, but that was all I've written onto the disk. The chkdsk result was as follows. It did not get stuck, and it took around 10 hours, which is expected for a normal disk.
PS C:\Windows\system32> chkdsk D: /R
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows.
Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
256 file records processed.
File verification completed.
Phase duration (File record verification): 20.58 milliseconds.
0 large file records processed.
Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.66 milliseconds.
0 bad file records processed.
Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 0.21 milliseconds.
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
2 reparse records processed.
284 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
Phase duration (Index verification): 38.25 milliseconds.
0 unindexed files scanned.
Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 0.28 milliseconds.
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 1.62 milliseconds.
2 reparse records processed.
Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 1.09 milliseconds.
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 31.26 milliseconds.
14 data files processed.
Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 0.25 milliseconds.
Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
240 files processed.
File data verification completed.
Phase duration (User file recovery): 788.01 milliseconds.
Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters ...
1220879528 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Phase duration (Free space recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.
Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.
4769305 MB total disk space.
35904 KB in 9 files.
76 KB in 16 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
215247 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
4769060 MB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
1220942335 total allocation units on disk.
1220879529 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 892.88 milliseconds (892 ms).
This was the CrystalDiskInfo results.
SeaTools says the disk is okay.
It seems fine now, but what happened yesterday is very bugging me. I can't tell if the disk is truly okay or not. Disk was purchased 3 days ago, and therefore I would like to have it replaced as quickly as possible if there is an issue with it, even if the disk is not going to fail any time soon.
