Leo, your intonation is impeccable. You talk intelligibly...and not too fast or too slow. Your voice is not annoying to listen to. You're not boring. You don't mumble or spit when you talk. You're really good at it. You should do it more often.
Wow. Finally. A real teacher. He breaks down the most frustrating computer "stuff" into baby steps that walk you right up to the solution. Uses uncomplicated analogies to draw the picture and plant it in your head. Best thing he does though: made me realize I'm not really an idiot that's too stupid to learn.
Currently running /f /r /x on my 2tb machine. I can see it now. I'm laying on my death bed, my grandkids cuddled next to me as I boot my computer for the first time in 74 years.
@mba2ceo yeah, turned put at the time of me taking it to repair the damn thing, the HDD had shattered inside, resulting in the laptop unable to repair itself Switched to SSDs, now I got a new pc on its own - gaming desktop :>
WOW... You are the real teacher... You explained in such a way that a layman who doesn't know what a computer is or have never used a computer can understand.. Thank you!
Another educational video. Excellent analogy! One question: Is it also worthwhile to run chkdsk on solid state drives from time to time? (Are SSDs susceptible to the same indexing problems and/or bad "clusters" as disk drives?)
Appreciate your wideos tho. It was a smart ass tone I used but I watch these videos to get better at adulting on computers and your video stands true regardless of windows being the worst at the responsibilities to their customers.
It kinda doesn't. It's a different tool for a different purpose. It basically checks to make sure that Windows files are the versions theyre supposed to be, not altered by malware or something else, and restores those that aren't what they should b.
Amazing thank you for such brief and concise content. I have a question though, after running the /f and /r and it says there was a sector or section that is not wrietable and after restart it was not able to fix it. What’s next?
@@askleonotenboom Is an issue like that likely to get worse? Or in such a case, can the disk still be safely used, or are you essentially rolling the dice on possible catastrophic failure on that drive?
@@stephenpatterson2860 If this were my machine I'd replace the drive. Definitely feels like a rolling the dice situation. Make sure to back up completely/regularly, regardless of what you decide.
CHKDSK is quite heavy on the disc. Due to the heat, a problematic disc (e.g. nvme) may rise new failures that were not actually there at the start of the scan... So avoid running CHKDSK too often and remember to keep backups.
It's been well known /generally accepted for years that for the poor single spinning disk folks, who are beginning to have drive issues as manifested by chkdisk issues, doing lengthy chkdisks can simply reduce the drive's remaining overall life,as often drive's who have suffered partial/slight head crashes might only have scant useful time of life remaining. If one has a good backup, great! If not, one might be prioritize over extricating one's data vice risking accelerating the drive's potential death....@@weneedcriticalthinking
That's correct - CHKDSK is about checking the disk, not the operating system. (System File Checker - askleo.com/what_is_the_system_file_checker_and_how_do_i_run_it/ - and DISM - referenced here: askleo.com/five-steps-to-repair-windows-10-without-losing-programs/ - will do that.)
@@Centenario-2 How do you stop it? I was just testing one of my Seagate external hard drives (the one that's not problematic ). The other one with the issue does not show up (but the laptop detects it), so I can't do the chkdsk for it, and that's the one I need to check. Now I'm stuck with 18 hrs ETA. How to cancel? Can I just Exit by clicking "X"?
@@LizandFamilyXO man, you really can't stop a chkdsk once it's going (if it's going on longer than a few seconds or a minute, like let's say, an hour) You'd have to force it off with the power button, when I did that, my laptop wouldn't get to the login screen let alone show that screen after the "prepping auto repair," it was just a blank black screen I already figured there was hard drive damage cause It's taken a few tumbles. Though, for all I know your physically undamaged pc or laptop should operate normally after forcing it off.
How many stages does /r /f have? I'm on stage 4 where it seems to be checking all the pages (Guessing that's the repair part?). Is stage 4 the final stage? I'm only running this because my disk sometimes randomly stops loading stuff (have to force a restart). Hoping this can fix or let me know more about the issue.
Kooltube, can you tell us how yours turned out? Right now mine is on stage 5. It says, "Stage 5 Looking for bad, free clusters..."' Hope that helps. On my 1TB drive, this is taking forEVER, and ever and...... LOL!
@@Davethreshold been a good while so can't exactly remember, but I think it got to stage 7 and finished. It took most of the day. can't remember the amount of hours as I just walked away and left it, after a while.
Thank you for this. I'm doing R on a 1TB drive and it is taking so long...... Like Don Rickles said when he visited Ed Sullivan: "it was like watching a fly crawl up a drape!"
Wow! Ijust did the checkdisk slash r without starting the slash f. Is it okay? Windows 10 update makes my device bluescreen (your device run into a problem and an need to restart, and its about WHEA uncorrectable error) frequently. In this case, what should i do? Should i get back my windows 10 before updates or what? :( please help me
Hello Leo, your explanation was amazing. very good. I'm running chkdsk on a 5 TB HD, and since today at 6am and now at 2pm the process is stopped at the same point. can chkdsk take days?
@@askleonotenboom so when i start the chkdsk was yesterday 9pm, the process was okay till 10pm was checked : 2895 of 90166 files done. So at 6am was: 29246 of 90166 And now 7:40pm is 29247 of 90166. Do you think that i have to wait more. I saw some people talking about hd 5tb can take days to finish.
@@vidadefotografo8213 Honestly, this is sounding like the disk has a surface error and that it's trying (and trying and trying) to deal with it. Is this /F or /R? In any case, it really depends on how patient you are and how much time you have. Me? Yes, I'd let it run for a week. The problem is that if you interrupt it now you have no idea whether that bad spot on the drive will cause you problems in the future.
@@askleonotenboom i used /F and was okay, finished in 20 minutes. So after that i did /r. The problem in the HD is that i can not copy or transfer the files . I should have tested when chkdsk terminated /f. but i put straight way to /r.
As I'm checking my external HD through /f /r and it's at stage 4 , is it safe to stop the check disk and how can I exit cmd prompt as it is taking way too long? Thanks!
Very helpful. My external drive has somehow been corrupted. My computer can''t even "see" it. What can I do now? I sure hope you have some advice for this non- computer expert.
Hi Leo! I have two identical WD 4tb red Nas Hhd, same age and almost new. One is fast, the other is very slow. I have tried to format and run Check disk, with no luck. Do you have any ideas what can be wrong here? Thank you again for your time!
Could be so many things it's impossible for me to diagnose remotely. I'm assuming they connected identically as well. Does CHKDSK completely fail, and if so is there an error message?
@@askleonotenboom Thank you Leo for your answer! Both hard drives are external and I use the same StarTech SATA Hot Swap Bay. Copying 6 GB from c: takes only a couple of minutes for the fast one, but exactly the same files from c: takes 16 minutes for the slow one. Also, same PC, same source (C:), same bay and same files. I have tried formatting the slow hard drive and the formatting went through without error, although it took longer than normal. I've tried CHKDSK /f and r. Neither gave any error.
your video helped me past the "Red Error in Macrium Reflect" during Cloning, it said to "Chkdsk C: /R", took about 4 - 5 hours to Repair for 1 TB 3.5" HD, then after it Rebooted & came back up, went into Macrium & Clone ran smoothly
hello Leo i need to ask you somethimg about (chkdsk /r or /f) when i do (chkdsk /r or /f) after restart yes but when i see this message says "to skiyp disk cheeking press any key" IT DOSE CANCEL ITSELF without doing cheeking every time i restart windows7 Although I didn't even cancel the command without even my interfering thank you
My case is that, out of nowhere, a image file become 0 octet and it's invisible, unless searching it through tab. There is no thumbnail too. Window Defenfer found no virus or malware. It is suspected it's due to constant download of pictures. I heard that chkdsk alone repair while reading instead of just read but you says the opposite. In this 0 octet case, it is worth chkdsk? Do disk defrag work too?
I'm not sure I completely undersand what you're asking, but I will say this: CHKDSK by itself doesn't creat problems, it simply reads the disk and exposes any that are already there. If the disk is marginal then perhaps any read could be a problem. CHKDSK with /F or /R will write to the disk. Defrag won't help, and in fact can make things much much worse if the disk is having problems. BACK THAT DISK UP - it does sounds like it may be starting to fail, but that's just a guess.
@@askleonotenboom Sometime, a file become invisible, searchable on tab, and if we open it on GIMP or Paint, it says the following "No such file or directory". If we move it to another folder, it will fail. We can run Check Disk by right click on the drive and properties, right?
I have an important folder on my external hard drive, that says File Directory Corrupted or Unreadable, I took a "Pot Shot" and ran chkdsk f it says File Record segment 4840-4843 is unreadable and so I can not get in to ANYthing in that folder. ANY Suggestions. While I'm pondering to run chkdsk r, I'm just afraid of doing any further damage to remaining files I can access. VERY Desperate as the file I can not get into is my "Expense" File with all my receipts & downloads
Hello Leo , I have a 12 tb disk which is RAW now.I tried CHKDSK but it say it can't run there is "master file table" error.Which recovery program you would suggest or if I delete the partition and write again can I have my files back ?
Hey Leo. When the check finished it said 0 bad sectors were found but still deleted some files on my hard drive(s) Now i am struggling with Recuva to find out WHAT has been deleted after chkdsk /r I did a restore point before the chkdsk. is it safe to go back to it now ? i also can't find any found.000 folder anywhere
This is why if at all possible you back up PRIOR to running these tools. There may have been no bad sectors, but it sounds like file system information was corrupted some how. It's unclear whether you'd be able to recover the now missing files. System restore won't help, this isn't what it does.
@@askleonotenboomthank you again. yes, looks like system restore would just roll back the system to a previous state wich i don't really need. i remember running previously dism, sfc scannow and chkdsk with no problems and i wonder why did it chose now to "replace" files (according to recuva) one on another since no errors were found before. most of the data was lost on my secondary drive (HDD) wich is not where my OS is stored
Very informative, I ran a chkdsk /f /r the PC rebooted and started doing its thing, being an 8tb hdd It estimated 10+ hours, so I turned off my monitor thinking I'll check back later, after about 10 min out of curiosity I wanted to see the progress, the problem is there is no more signal so I left it over night, still no monitor signal, any suggestion? Edit: also my kb&m are off, they stay on for a brief moment if I replug them
Hi, thanks for your instruction. I have been trying to check and repair disk. But, malicious program in my computer is preventing it from doing it. Whenever, I enter chkdsk or chkdsk/f or chkdsk/r, it attempts to check then message appears check disk has been cancelled. Then computer starts loading normally. Plase tell me how to solve the problem. thanks.
I think I'm stuck. I ran chkdsk d: /f /r /x on my laptop for 1TB for one of the partiotioned drive (drive D: in my case). Apparently, took more than 12 hours and still running. I am not sure if i can stop it halfway and reboot. Is it safe to do so? OR should I just keep it running until it ends? If it really stuck for say more than a day, it is okay I reboot? Please help. thanks .
If it’s doing it for that long, there’s probably a reason. (The fact that CHKDSK is still running is WHY you can’t assign drive letter). I’d let it run as long as you can tolerate, and then instead of rebooting, go to the command window in which CHKDSK is running and type CTRL+C. That’ll stop it.
@@thespermsharkthespermwhale1938 Sure. That;'s one way to convert it from NTFS to FAT32, for example, though there are other reasons. No harm in doing so.
That's what /R is all about. It can't neccessarily FIX every bad sector, but it will try to avoid them. Even then it's possible that not everything can be fixed.
@@askleonotenboom Oo, got it. By then I had initiated that scan and it took like 3 hours for it to finish. I was actually having a lot of glitchy issues in my windows 11 laptop after I recently upgraded it from 10 to 11. When I opened a pdf file however, along with glitching out and resetting my whole screen, this time my laptop became slower than a turtle. I ran the sfc scan (it did say it found some issues and fixed it), then this chkdsk /r scan and because it still seemed slow after these two, I ran the Dism scan as well, and then finally when I restarted my laptop after that it seems to be working at it's normal speed. Btw thanks a bunch for replying to my comment sir, I didn't really expect a reply but I'm glad I got it, especially from the man himself! 😊
Im having a weird problem. Folders on my external hdd about 5 so far say "You need to format the disk before you can use it" or something like that. Im already in the harddrive and can go into other folders and files, but the 5 folders say 0 bytes but the overall number of gb stored on the harddrive has not gone down so i know data has not been lost . I stopped writing to it a long time ago. I just dont want to lose access to other folders, first it was just one but then it happend to others so i havent turned it on since. Do you think it would be ok to run chkdsk?
All I can say is maybe. The disk is DEFINITELY having problems. I would first try to back it up entirely - perhaps using an image backup program. This is why we back up, though. If the data you want is only on this disk, then you haven't been backing up. That's an important lesson to learn.
My external hard drive is "corrupted" and I cant access to my information. Can I do /r in an external hard drive? /f or /r could delete my information if my external hard drive is corrupted?
You can use CHKDSK on an external drive, yes. It's possible that your data is already gone, "fixing" it with CHKDSK may just make that apparent. If important you might want ot check with a data recovery service, but they can be costly. (And start backing up please.)
May i know if there are ways to recover my external drive? I tried chkdsk g: f/. But it stopped at stage 2, with correcting error in index $0 for file 25. I hope you can give me some advice. Thanks
To start with I'd let it run to completion, even if that takes a long time. After that, if there's still a problem I'd CHKDSK /R. If there's still a problem I'd see if Recuva could at least recover the files. (I'm assuming you have no backup. You should have a backup.)
@@askleonotenboom i actually dont and i want to. But now its not opening, and remain ntfs. It always stopped at correcting errors index $0 in file 25. And the scan count also stopped.
I used chkdsk g: /f and /r. It always stopped on the same file if im not mistaken. I wanted to try the sfc and dism. But i dont know the command for external drive. I hope you can help me on this. Thanks
@@Zero-kw8ctsfc and dism apply to the system only, not to any other drive. Other that letting it sit for a while (several hours, or even days) when it appears to have stopped, the only other approach is to take it to a data recovery service if there's data that you need recovered from it. That'll be expensive. OR if you have a backup of your data, then it's time to simply replace that drive.
I was hoping to recover it by doing chkdsk. But thanks about the info that i can't use sfc and dism command to external drives. I will try to use other updated os. I hope that will work. Thanks
Hi Ask leo, i don't know if my problem is related to this however when i ran the chkdsk util after 2 bsod crash error: ''UNEXPECTED STORE EXCEPTION'' and another ''CRITICAL PROCESS DIED". The chkdsk returned several lines of errors: Error detected in index $I30 for file AEA5 Error detected in index $I30 for file AEA5 Error detected in index $I30 for file AEC1 Error detected in index $I30 for file AEC1 Error detected in index $I30 for file AEC7 Error detected in index $I30 for file AEC7 I'm confused as I've not seen this exact problem on youtube, please can you help.
All that tells you is that there are issues with the information on the hard disk. Hopefully you're backed up, but also hopefully a CHKDSK /F run to completion will get you a working disk again.
I see System Interrupts (34% or 93%) for few seconds after I opened task manager and can't see it after few seconds. I can see disk usage shows 100% at start, then within few seconds it reduces & goes down to normal. So my question is: Those system interrupts occur because of hard-disk problem?
Hi AskLeo! My pc was freezing up and shutting down after startup so I ran chkdsk /r. While it was close to finishing, the problem I was experiening on boot occured so chkdsk wasn't able to finish :/ What happened and what should I do?
What can I do if I hard rebooted during a install and now the drive shows but no disk drive letter just unallocated even tho there 1.5tb of data on it….I made a simple mistake and I’d hate to lose all the data that was fine….
I assume you mean your system disk (and that this has nothing to do with the video you're commenting on)? One thing would be to boot from a backup program's rescue disk, create a backup image of the system disk, and then reinstall or repair windows on the disk. You can then recover data from the backup image. (And if you were ever at risk of losing data, then you weren't backing up in the first place. Please start.)
Are there any chkdsk commands to use in fixing a micro sd card, my micro sd card is working somehow, the only problem is that all new datas being stored in it gets corrupted and the old datas are working properly. It's becoming a real pain since we are doin online classes and my phone can't hold on to any more files. And I only have my smartphone in order to attend online classes, my sd card is at least 1TB. I used CHKDSK /F the other day and it still corrupts the new data being stored in it. Please I need help 🥺😭
When flash memory starts corrupting data it's time to replace it. IMMEDIATELY. (CHKDSK can be used on flash memory, but it won't fix failing hardware).
Leo, I try to run chkdsk /f/r and it asks if it is ok to run at the next restart - I say "Y" but upon restart it doesn't run. What happened? Please help.
@@askleonotenboom Don't see anything about chkdsk in the eventviewer. did see lots of errors "Microsoft-Windows-User Device Registration/Admin" Event 360 also "[15988:4856:1119/121015.964:WARNING:chrome_content_verifier_delegate.cc(216)] Corruption detected in extension lmjegmlicamnimmfhcmpkclmigmmcbeh installed at: C:\Users\..." Event ID 256 Does that help?
@@terraxallunasheira If it's external, try a different USB cable and machine. Alternately let that 101 hours happen. Sounds like there's a problem with the disk itself, so I hope its contents are already backed up somewhere in addition.
Chkdsk had me run chkdsk /f on boot, it crashes 3 times then the computer boots and skips it and the issue persists. I originally checked the disc because my computer blue screens when I try to update my computer. This computer is only 4 months old and I built it myself, im really stuck on what to do.
This is behaving like a bad hard drive, or a hard drive with a bad sector that can't be repaired. If you can I'd try diagnosing the hard disk on another machine, or perhaps even replacing it.
I restored my laptop (ssd) yesterday and since now it doesn't feel running smooth. All drivers are updated to the newest version. Could it be my ssd is damaged?
Usually a damaged SSD will fail catastrophically. Hard to say what "running smooth" might mean, but you might look at the tasks that are running and see if any are use exceptionally high resources like CPU or disk.
5:47 "In the case of our book, that's kind of like reprinting a page and putting it in place of the page that was damaged or torn." More like, reprinting a page and replacing one of the blank pages in the end of the book, because the bad page will still be physically there and an otherwise blank and available page will have to be spent. I wish you mentioned how does it do that, where is that information kept, and what should we avoid doing in order to not undo what chkdsk has done (diskpart, deep format, etc...). Anyways, great video.
@@askleonotenboom Use it as follows for the newer versions in Windows 10. 1. Chkdsk drive: 2. chkdsk /scan drive: 3. chkdsk /spotfix drive: (step 2-3 only if necessary). Forget about /f /r
What /R will do on an Nvme SSD tho? For hard drives that have moving parts it is totally understandable but what is it doing on an SSD that has no moving parts?
I'm honestly not sure. I would hope CHKDSK is smart enough to do something more appropriate: either ignore, or perform a simple, single, write/read to make sure the entire SSD is working.