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  • #1

    Problem with external drive

    I have a 4TB external drive with a lot of important info on it. On Saturday, when I started my PC, I got a black screen with a cursor showing. After doing a little sleuthing, I unplugged the external drive. Computer worked. I plugged in the drive. Computer threw a hissy fit.

    I started running chkdsk on it on Sunday. It is still running. I have received several messages reading: "The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters." And, "A disk read error occurred." And, "Windows replaced bad clusters."

    What should I do? Stop chkdsk, download Victoria, and try that? Keep running chkdsk? Do something else?
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  • #2
    Bad sectors are physical imperfections on the drive. Those will never get better, and will most likely get worse in time. If it says there's not enough room to replace bad clusters, that thing is likely packed to the gills. It's generally best practice to leave 20% or more free space on a boot drive (preferably 30%), but any HDD will start to thrash below 20. SSD's are much better about this, but still not infallible.

    Your best bet is to backup everything you can from that drive and hope for the best; it's gonna become unusable sooner or later. Check a local Office Despot/walmart/whatever for a basic drive that can fit all of that and more without breaking the bank. If you have a DVD/blu-ray burner and media, use that for backups in the meantime. A few GB per disc is better than nothing.

    For now, try to identify THE most crucial stuff you have on the external drive and back that up to your boot drive FIRST.
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    • #3
      God. I'm now running the trial version of Stellar Data Recovery, and it's taking ages (no doubt due to the size of the drive). I have a new, 6TB drive up and running, where I save documents, but here's the thing: when I try to send a document by email, it doesn't work. Not only can I not access anything, but the email crashes (along with the browser). I've tried it on more than one email account. And, I can't download anything from an email. Do I have to wait until this scan is done?

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