Defrag..asks for chkdsk /f

[William B. Lurie]

In all the years that I've used Defrag (and, separately,
chkdsk), I had never seen a window telling me to first
do chkdsk /f before doing defrag. I do chkdsk /r
periodically, after first doing defrag. This time, when
I got the message, I did chkdsk /r, which I had the
understanding is a more rigorous or complete test,
since it has two more steps. Upon rebooting, I tried
defrag again, and got the same advice. So, this time, I
did chkdsk /f, and after it rebooted, I was able to do
defrag.

Defrag has always given me a list of the disk's partitions,
C: drive first, and then in order below that. Suddenly, as
never before, it gives me the list with C: drive at the
bottom.

Your valued comments are invited........

 

[Ian D]

In all the years that I've used Defrag (and, separately,
chkdsk), I had never seen a window telling me to first
do chkdsk /f before doing defrag. I do chkdsk /r
periodically, after first doing defrag. This time, when
I got the message, I did chkdsk /r, which I had the
understanding is a more rigorous or complete test,
since it has two more steps. Upon rebooting, I tried
defrag again, and got the same advice. So, this time, I
did chkdsk /f, and after it rebooted, I was able to do
defrag.

Defrag has always given me a list of the disk's partitions,
C: drive first, and then in order below that. Suddenly, as
never before, it gives me the list with C: drive at the
bottom.

Your valued comments are invited........

Chkdsk /r is supposed to include /f. Maybe it did
something defrag didn't expect. If /f works, use that.

Re the drive order in the list, I wouldn't worry about it.
I use Diskeeper, and it sometimes puts the system
drives/partitions at the bottom. Disk Management
usually puts system drives at the bottom of the list.

As a matter of interest, System Restore is peculiar in
the way it lists drives if you have more than one HD.
It starts with drive 0, partition 1, then drive 1 followed
by all the drive 1 partitions, then finally the drive 0
partitions.

 

[Xandros]

Perhaps your drive is developing a lot of bad sectors? Try running the hard
drive manufacturer's drive analysis software on it.

 

[William B. Lurie]

Perhaps your drive is developing a lot of bad sectors? Try running the hard
drive manufacturer's drive analysis software on it.

Interesting suggestion, but chkdsk only found the
same 4k in bad sectors that have been there for a year.
I get nervous about running serious HD checks on my
master drive. The event only happened that once, and
I'm inclined to wait until something more serious
occurs.

Meanwhile, I'm very religious about having a recently-
created exact clone on a Slave drive, off line.

 

[Twayne]

In all the years that I've used Defrag (and, separately,

chkdsk), I had never seen a window telling me to first
do chkdsk /f before doing defrag. I do chkdsk /r
periodically, after first doing defrag. This time, when
I got the message, I did chkdsk /r, which I had the
understanding is a more rigorous or complete test,
since it has two more steps. Upon rebooting, I tried
defrag again, and got the same advice. So, this time, I
did chkdsk /f, and after it rebooted, I was able to do
defrag.

Defrag has always given me a list of the disk's partitions,
C: drive first, and then in order below that. Suddenly, as
never before, it gives me the list with C: drive at the
bottom.

Your valued comments are invited........

chkdsk /r includes the /f (fix) functions. The /r simply tells it to
also look for bad sectors in ALL of the disk space, including unused
space, so it can mark bad sectors if there are any. I seldo do it, but
it makes sense to run a chkdsk/r before doing a defrag; that way you can
be pretty sure of not moving any data to bad sectors; they will already
have been marked for non-use.
Chkdsk does sometimes find bad sectors; that's probaly OK as long as
the next several times you run chkdsk the number doesn't get higher.
Growing numbers of bad sectors indicates a drive beginning to fail and
usually should be considered serious enough to perform deeper tests on
the drive. On most of today's newest drives you won't see any bad
sectors, so if you do start seeing them and the numbers change, it's
something to be concerned about.

HTH

TWayne

 

[Twayne]

Interesting suggestion, but chkdsk only found the
same 4k in bad sectors that have been there for a year.
I get nervous about running serious HD checks on my
master drive. The event only happened that once, and
I'm inclined to wait until something more serious
occurs.

Meanwhile, I'm very religious about having a recently-
created exact clone on a Slave drive, off line.

Makes sense: As long as the number isn't changing, it's probably of no
serious consequence.

Twayne

 

[William B. Lurie]

chkdsk /r includes the /f (fix) functions. The /r simply tells it to
also look for bad sectors in ALL of the disk space, including unused
space, so it can mark bad sectors if there are any. I seldo do it, but
it makes sense to run a chkdsk/r before doing a defrag; that way you can
be pretty sure of not moving any data to bad sectors; they will already
have been marked for non-use.
Chkdsk does sometimes find bad sectors; that's probaly OK as long as
the next several times you run chkdsk the number doesn't get higher.
Growing numbers of bad sectors indicates a drive beginning to fail and
usually should be considered serious enough to perform deeper tests on
the drive. On most of today's newest drives you won't see any bad
sectors, so if you do start seeing them and the numbers change, it's
something to be concerned about.

HTH

TWayne

What you say...makes good sense. I will change my ways; I have
been running defrag first, *then* chkdsk, really because
defrag takes much less time. Yes, it helps, and thank you.

 

[Gerry]

William

You do not need to include chkdsk in a housekeeping routine. It only
needs to be run if an error report indicates a disk error.

You should run Disk CleanUp before running Disk Defragmenter.

Another way to investigate your hard drive is to use HD Tune.

Try HD Tune only gives information and does not fix any
problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

--



Hope this helps.

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

 

[William B. Lurie]

Thanks again, for the valuable info. I have HDTune 2.55 and
running the big long scan showed one red box and 0.0% so I
guess the drive is healthy. I don't like Disk Cleanup because
(as I recall) it loses a lot of places-visited type of info.

Bill L.

 

[Twayne]

Thanks again, for the valuable info. I have HDTune 2.55 and

running the big long scan showed one red box and 0.0% so I
guess the drive is healthy. I don't like Disk Cleanup because
(as I recall) it loses a lot of places-visited type of info.

Not if you take a moment and tell it not to. Anway, a 3rd party app to
do what XP can do natively is always a great idea, eh? Not.