[diggeryo]

I had a problem with a portable hard drive (250 gigs). So I formatted it and am in the process of running XP error-checking on it (Right click on the drive in My Computer, choose the Tools tab, click on Check Now under Error Checking--I checked the option to "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.")

I know from experience that this method of error checking, as well as using CHKDSK, can take a considerable amount of time. In the past three hours, the progress bar has moved only about 20 percent of the way (It is on Phase 4). How long should I give it before I should assume it has frozen? (The computer itself is ok--it's not frozen).

Also, the Cancel button is grayed out. However, the X in the upper-right corner is lit. Would it cause any problems to the drive should I try to X out of it?

thanks,
mike.

Edited by diggeryo, 28 January 2008 - 01:35 PM.

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I am having an almost identical problem.
I am running disk check on my Acomdata portable USB drive.
I ran Tools->Check now and it went through phases 1-3 without any trouble.
I don't have ANY progress bars on Phase 4 and it's been sitting for two hours on Phase 4.
Like you, my "Start" and "cancel" buttons are diabled. All I can do is click the X to close the Window but I don't want to damage anything.

I know from experience that Norton Partition Magic does not work well with portable drives.
In fact, Partition Magic always tells me my portable USB hard drives are corrupt when they are working just fine. I wonder if Windows XP disk check has similar problems with portable USB drives.

[Peter Mac]

I am having an almost identical problem.
I am running disk check on my Acomdata portable USB drive.
I ran Tools->Check now and it went through phases 1-3 without any trouble.
I don't have ANY progress bars on Phase 4 and it's been sitting for two hours on Phase 4.
Like you, my "Start" and "cancel" buttons are diabled. All I can do is click the X to close the Window but I don't want to damage anything.

I know from experience that Norton Partition Magic does not work well with portable drives.
In fact, Partition Magic always tells me my portable USB hard drives are corrupt when they are working just fine. I wonder if Windows XP disk check has similar problems with portable USB drives.

[Peter Mac]

After two hours 3 status bars finally popped up! Is it possible that scanning a USB hard drive is just so terribly slow it takes 10 hours to scan it?

I really just want to cancel this window by clicking the "X"
Is there any harm in stopping my disk check?

[diggeryo]

I've been running mine now for about four and a half hourse, and the bar is only around 30% across now. Ten of those little squares have appeared. I want to cancel mine as well, but don't want to do any damage.

[Peter Mac]

Interestingly, during the next hour I had 10 additional bars pop up. There is not a straight line graph for time/progress for this operation. It looks like a function of x squared right now. Anyway, it's getting close to finishing for me so I will be patient. I'm worried once Phase 4 is done it's going to sit for five more hours

[The Skeptic]

That's an interesting subject that you brought up. I tried the process on my usb drive and got the same results as you got. The process cannot be stopped by clicking the red X but can be stopped by entering Task Manager and, in applications, cancelling My Computer. No damage done.

If you try chkdsk on a non-system partition of the hard disk the same thing occurs.

I think that the slowness is inherent to the type of hard disk connection. To give you an idea, I just ran HD Tune on two disks, on a rather old computer. Here are the results:

1: An old Quantum connected through an IDE cable.
transfer rate (average) 28.2 MB/sec
Access Time 13 ms
Burst rate 64.6 MB/sec
CPU usage 5.3%

2: A newer Seagate, 7200 rpm, 8 MB buffer, USB connected.
transfer rate (average) 22.8 MB/sec
Access Time 16.9 ms
Burst rate 23 MB/sec
CPU usage 28.2%

In every parameter the old IDE is faster and consuming less resources.

[Shadan]

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but the free edition only support 32-bit, 64-bit supported Professional edition could received from trailpay without paying:
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