2TB External HDD became 100% full after failed Chkdsk

Asclepius89

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Jan 7, 2009
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Hello,

This is a very weird problem I've never seen before and no one seems to know what caused it or what's it about...
Some days ago I was running a diagnostic chkdsk /r on a USB 3.0 2TB external HDD NTFS that had about 30% used space or so (ran it because a program had interrupted the moving of files and I just wanted to make sure they were all ok). The drive is only 6 months old.

The chkdsk ran fine and I saw it get to Stage 5 of 5 (I think) which is the longest one that is looking at millions of free clusters. So I went away for a while.

When I came back all there was to greet me instead of chkdsk log results was this continually being spammed:
"Error in writing the output log"

I closed the command window and checked My Computer only to see that now instead of having 70% space free the disk had 0 bytes free of 2TB.

I went to check all files inside and they all seem intact. I checked the properties and they all only add up to around 600GB.
Also no hidden, system or recycle bin files that could explain the full space were found either.

2 programs were able to give some (although vague) information:

WinDirStat just says that, among all the normal files taking space, the disk also has <Unknown> taking up 1.4TB worth of space.

Defraggler shows no free blocks whatsoever (as expected). There are only the blue blocks from my expected files followed by lots of red/fragmented blocks each said to contain 1 file called $BadClus:‎$Bad, Size: 1.4TB, Type Unknown, Location G:‎\.

SMART Disk information says Health is GOOD and there are no values that report any kind of error, CRC error or the such.

Additionally:
Besides the chkdsk resulting in these free space woes every time I connect the drive the System log reports "The default transaction resource manager on volume G: encountered a non-retriable error and could not start. The data contains the error code.".

I am also unable to use the USB Safe-removal like I used to because it always says the disk is being used even if it isn't (I have to shut down PC to be 100% safe now).

I cannot reformat as I have no other drive with enough space to clone it, at least not yet... so I was looking for other options.

What I tried so far:

Ran chkdsk /b and I saw that between Stage 1 and 3 it reported finding and deleting all the "bad sectors" that had replaced all the free space on the first chkdsk, but then it goes back to "Error in writing the output log" at the very end of chkdsk. Drive is unchanged and still with 0 bytes free.

Ran Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics Extended Test. Results: PASS.

Does anyone have any idea of what happened here and if there's anything else I could do instead of formatting?
Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
well... assuming your data is intact on that drive i would copy it to another drive and reformat.

your WinDirStat was really the only part of that i needed to see... and the WD utility (i assume you ran data lifeguard right? if you have not try that first)

 

Asclepius89

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Yes it was Data Lifeguard, ran both the quick and extended tests and both passed. The HDD itself is a Toshiba STOR.E by the way, if it matters.

I'll try to get a hold of another HDD tomorrow to back up the data and reformat. Should I run chkdsk on it again after it's formatted? If so which type of chkdsk?

Thanks.
 


i'll be honest with you. as a tech consultant i can't remember EVER using chkdsk. About the only thing it's good for is fixing a hard drive with bad sectors in windows xp... and if your hard drive has SMART windows 7 or higher already does that automatically.
 

Asclepius89

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So I moved my good data off the HDD and decided to run chkdsk just once more with 300GB free space just to see if it was a problem caused by having none at all but it was back to "Error writing the output log" and as expected filled it up all to 100% again.

I did a quick reformat and have all my free space again. The event log error messages are also gone and I can safely remove (actually found this latter issue was probably caused by booting with the drive connected).

Still I'd like to know why chkdsk fails like so on this drive. It does take a very long time and it's both my first USB 3.0 and first 2TB drive.

Speaking of SMART I've noticed the Power-off Retract Count number coincides with the number of times I've ran chkdsk so far, which is 3.
Also I've noticed that on stage 4 or 5 the HDD activity LED seems to turn off? Also can't feel or hear any activity, even though chkdsk shows to seemingly be checking free clusters normally. Wonder if that's normal behaviour...
 


i don't know why chkdsk is behaving like that on your drive. Though i do know Windows (every version to date) in general has a variety of issues with hard drives 2tb and larger (i think it has to do with the sector size in a NTFS partition) ... so that might have something to do with it.
 
Solution