Check Disk - How Long?

[dburn]

How long should check disk take to run? I'm trying to clean up my son's old
PC (a Gateway purchased in mid 2002) that he used at college but no longer
uses. Thanks!

 

[Shenan Stanley]

How long should check disk take to run? I'm trying to clean up my
son's old PC (a Gateway purchased in mid 2002) that he used at
college but no longer uses. Thanks!

That's like asking, "How long should it take to drive from here to there?"
and not giving any reference information about the vehicle in question
(condition, age, etc), the route being taken, the driving habits of the
driver, the weather, etc.

Given what little you have - if it takes more than a day - something is
wrong. Download the hard disk drive diagnostics utility from the hard disk
drive manufacturers support section of their web page and run it - see if
the hard disk drive is bad. Replace it if it is.

 

[dburn]

That's like asking, "How long should it take to drive from here to there?"
and not giving any reference information about the vehicle in question
(condition, age, etc), the route being taken, the driving habits of the
driver, the weather, etc.

Given what little you have - if it takes more than a day - something is
wrong. Download the hard disk drive diagnostics utility from the hard disk
drive manufacturers support section of their web page and run it - see if
the hard disk drive is bad. Replace it if it is.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way



I followed your link and will educate myself on how to ask questions in a smarter way. Here's a little more info though .... Check disk ran thru the first three stages within 15-20 minutes. It's on stage 4 - verifying file data - which has been running for a couple of hours and it's 15% complete. I don't think check disk has ever been run on this PC before. Does that give you something to respond to? Obviously, I'm very new at this so I'll take any other advice you have to offer, as well. Thx

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

It will take longer if it is encountering bad clusters, corrupt files etc.
Like Shenan stated, if it takes all day, replace the drive. If it takes most
of the day, replace the drive. Don't ask me how long most of the day is.
Personally, I would replace the drive if you want anything reliable..

 

[dburn]

It will take longer if it is encountering bad clusters, corrupt files etc.
Like Shenan stated, if it takes all day, replace the drive. If it takes most
of the day, replace the drive. Don't ask me how long most of the day is.
Personally, I would replace the drive if you want anything reliable..

Mike

Thanks for your insights. That gives me some context against which to
evaluate. I appreciate your response. Thx

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

Here's a little more info though .... Check disk ran thru the first
three stages within 15-20 minutes. It's on stage 4 - verifying file
data - which has been running for a couple of hours and it's 15%
complete. I don't think check disk has ever been run on this PC
before. Does that give you something to respond to? Obviously, I'm
very new at this so I'll take any other advice you have to offer, as
well. Thx

--- REPLY SEPARATOR ---

I've seen chkdsk take 6 hours to complete. If you include the /r
switch to fix bad sectors, it can over a day. It depends on the size
of your disk, how many sectors are currently inuse, read errors on the
disk, whether you use FAT or NTFS as the file system, etc.

If you see some progress in an hour, even if only a few percent under
the current test category, then let it keep going. I had one disk
where it took something like 2 days (I went to sleep so don't know how
much of the 2nd night it took before completing).

 

[Gerry]

Running Disk CleanUp before running chkdsk is a good idea.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~