Windows 8.1 Chkdsk doesn’t map out bad block

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My laptop hard drive (spinner) has a bad block but CHKDSK doesn’t map it out. After every restart there are 6 more message in the System Event Log:

The device, \Device\Hardisk0\Dr0, has a bad block.
Source: disk
Event ID: 7

Another symptom: Macrium Reflect throws this error message when I run a Full Image backup :

Saving Partition – Windows (C:)

-> Backup aborted! – Unable to read from disk – Error Code 23 – Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

That’s the problem, here is the System Info:
Acer Aspire V5 (8-ish years old )
Windows 8.1 Pro (with Stardock Start8)
RAM 8 GB
Disk Drive: ST1000LM024

If someone brought this old laptop to me to repair, I would recommend that they buy a new laptop. But I like Windows 8.1 because I can control when to install Windows Updates and with Start8 I have an easy Start menu and I don’t have to deal with the stupid Windows 8 program list.

I use the laptop at home for Outlook 2013, browsing with Vivaldi and Brave, guitar lessons, and oh yeah, Quickbooks 2011 for my little bitty business (almost retired.)

I have tried:

Chkdsk /f
Chkdsk /r
Chkdsk /f /r
Chkdsk /spotfix
Chkdsk /offlinescanandfix

These commands all require a reboot and seem to be running normally, but none of them provide any Wininit records in the Application Event Log like chkdsk always used to do, so I’m wondering if chkdsk is failing and just restarting the system or if there is a problem with the event log file.

But I am getting some info from:
Chkdsk /scan
which runs online. That puts a Chkdsk Event ID 26226 in the Application Event Log that says:

The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows.
Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure …
849664 file records processed.             File verification completed.
23012 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage …
1019240 index entries processed.           Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors …
Security descriptor verification completed.
84789 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal…
38538400 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0xba252000 for 0x10000 bytes.
Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0xba25c000 for 0x1000 bytes.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.
965825535 KB total disk space.
300737148 KB in 664128 files.
413028 KB in 84790 indexes.
48 KB in bad sectors.
987207 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
663688104 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
241456383 total allocation units on disk.
165922026 allocation units available on disk.

———————————————————————-

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure …

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage …

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors …

Replacing bad clusters in logfile.
Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.

I find those last two lines interesting. And yes, the number of KB in use by the system has slowly been creeping up, so I realize that the drive will fail soon.

So, I have moved almost everything from this old laptop to a newer Win10 machine. But I would like to clone the failing drive and swap in an SSD just because I want to see if I can do it. I realize that opening the chassis to swap the drive might be a Pandora’s box, but I’m up for giving it a go. I’ve done similar things before.

I found a hint that running chkdsk from the Windows Repair Environment might produce different results so I ran chkdsk c: /f /r from WRE. An interesting observation… When I run chkdsk from a command prompt in Windows and then reboot, the only status I get is progress up to 11% and then swirling dots for hours. However, from the Command Prompt in the WRE, I get complete progress status including such info as:

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data …
…
Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters …

Along with an ETA that is constantly updated.

When it finished the last 4 lines said:

Free space verification is complete.

Correcting errors in the Master File Table (MFT) mirror.

An unspecified error occurred (6e7466733686b2e 138c).

Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

So yeah, as always, there were no chkdsk messages in the event log. But, as with every restart there were 6 more of the “bad block” messages.

I’m wondering what incantation of chkdsk to run that will force chkdsk to actually work.

Or would it be better to run SeaTools or SpinRite?

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From experience, you should back up the hard disk and replace it. An SSD will be much faster, too.
The time that you spend chasing bad blocks etc is not worth it. Chkdsk is working; it is telling you that the disk has a problem that it cannot repair.

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Tchalms

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So, I have moved almost everything from this old laptop to a newer Win10 machine. But I would like to clone the failing drive and swap in an SSD just because I want to see if I can do it. I realize that opening the chassis to swap the drive might be a Pandora’s box, but I’m up for giving it a go. I’ve done similar things before.

That would be good – to clone it and replace the old one. But the problem is, that you state that you cant create image, because Macrium Reflect ends with error 23.

If you are willing to take the risk, pull the drive out of your chassis and bring it to your local service or able friend, that could help you cloning the drive.
The second option is to make a copy by yourself, if you own USB-SATA reduction. Then use Clonezilla for example.

It seems like you did everything just right, but the drive keeps failing.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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Tchalms

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In Macrium under Advanced >> Advanced Backup Options, tick the checkbox for Ignore bad sectors when creating images. Doing this will enable Macrium to create a full backup except for the bad sectors. I think that this option is also needed if you use Macrium to clone a drive which has bad sectors.

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Ascaris, Tchalms, doriel

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Spinrite doesn’t work on modern hard drives. You hard drive is failing really fast. Get it backed up or cloned immediately. See my post about how to make Macrium ignore bad sectors.

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Tchalms

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As I’ve said before, modern hard disks are self checking and correcting and you should never see errors passed to Windows. When you see these errors, the hard disk has already failed in some important way and will never recover.

Your data is at risk. Get a replacement now!

cheers, Paul

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Tchalms

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Chuckle out loud. I’m kind of liking the newer laptop. Moved everything from the 8 or 9 year old Core i5 to a Core i7-7500 with a fresh install of Win10-20H2.

So now I get to “play” with the failing hard drive to see if this old dog can learn a thing or two without any stress of needing to get some work done or being afraid of losing data.

Thank you all for reading my TLDR and thank you for your ideas. I’ll report back. Cheers!

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GoneToPlaid

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In case you want to put a new 2.5″ hard drive in your old laptop, you might consider doing what I do. I buy 2.5″ Seagate external hard drives and then I cannibalize them by removing the internal SATA hard drive. There are plenty of Youtube videos which show you how to do this. Note that Seagate uses standard SATA hard drives with a USB3 adapter plugged into the drive’s SATA connectors. Other brands can not be cannibalized since the USB3 port is built into the drive’s controller board. In other words, 2.5″ external drives from most other brands are not SATA hard drives.

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And voiding any warranty!
Just buy an internal SSD and maybe a spacer if your old laptop needs one.

cheers, Paul

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It would be interesting to see what Speccy reports for your failing hard drive.

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Tchalms wrote:

So now I get to “play” with the failing hard drive to see if this old dog can learn a thing or two without any stress of needing to get some work done or being afraid of losing data.

Replace your HDD with a SSD drive (Nvme or SATA III). No bad blocks.

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GoneToPlaid, Tchalms

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Alex5723 wrote:

Replace your HDD with a SSD drive (Nvme or SATA III). No bad blocks.

There is no guarantee that those disks will not produce bad block errors. See the SSD test for reported errors.

cheers, Paul

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We have an Acer Aspire V5.   My son’s first NVidia gaming laptop; it worked, sort of, despite the painfully slow HDD and not much memory.  He’s moved on to high powered stuff but still uses the Acer, mostly for distance learning vid stuff, vastly better than the Chromebook the school gave him.

Anyway, two years ago, I put a 1 TB SSD in it and more memory, that’s about all that can be done with it.  Calibrated his display for him, too and upgraded to Win 10 Pro, highly recommended.  Nothing wrong with it given what it is; will be useable for years and runs easy games fine.

I cloned his spinner with Clonezilla, no problems.  But it was in good shape, not failing as yours appears to be.  No point at all in cloning a bad drive unless there’s a very obscure reason for it, maybe programs on it that can’t be replaced.  Drive cloning can be fluffy clouds and sunny days or a frustrating exercise in trial and error.  I’ve had both, although most went well.

Download a Windows ISO and use that for the new drive after it’s mounted and formatted.  Control Panel>Admin Tools>Computer Management.  The license should still be intact, good idea to get the key off the laptop or use a utility to reveal it just in case.

There are forums full of persistent folks who trade tales about cloning drives, good ones and failing ones; the banter is uh…interesting!  Very good for confirmation bias.

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I did a few things with the old machine over the weekend.

Speccy had no complaints. On the Storage page, all of the statuses said Good. Maybe I could attach the screenshots, but I’m not sure that would be helpful.

SeaTools Disk Short and Long Tests both Failed, and the Fix also Failed.

Macrium Reflect: I marked the box to ignore bad blocks and the full image backup worked (although it did complain that there was data in a bad sector.)

I have a Crucial 1TB SSD waiting when I get a round tuit.

Thanks all!

TimC

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Cybertooth

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SeaTools is the authority in my book. This result would get you a replacement under warranty.

cheers, Paul

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