Member Avatar for GrimJack

Somewhere along the line, my E: drive where I keep all my game/non-system stuff got replicated to F: Now when I boot, chkdsk comes up and says all these sectors are unreadable for both E&F drives. F: should not exist how do I rescue my system? I would at least like to get the replicant drive to go away - I just bought Spin-Rite but am not sure I should run it until I can reduce the drive count.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

  • 4 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 112 Views
  • 4 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by darsh999

Dani AI

Generated

A focused triage for 's report: two drive letters (E: and an unexpected F:) showing the same data and boot-time chkdsk reporting unreadable sectors. First priority is data preservation; second is to determine whether F: is a second mount of the same volume or a distinct volume/partition so the extra letter can be safely removed.

Quick diagnostics (run from an elevated prompt and/or Disk Management):

  • Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and note which Disk number and partition each drive letter maps to.
  • List mounted volumes and their GUIDs to see whether E: and F: reference the same volume.

Run these commands to inspect volumes and mount points:

mountvol
diskpart
list volume
select volume <n>     (use the number shown for E: or F:)
detail volume
exit

If mountvol shows the same Volume{GUID} for both letters, the extra letter is just an extra mount point and can be removed safely via Disk Management -> Change Drive Letter and Paths -> Remove, or from an elevated prompt with:

mountvol F: /D

If E: and F: are different volumes or map to different disk numbers, that points at partition-table or filesystem corruption (or a controller/driver issue). In that case, create a sector-level image of the entire disk to a separate drive before attempting repairs. Imaging/cloning first protects data and lets recovery tools (chkdsk, SpinRite) be run against a copy rather than the original medium. ’s backup/external-caddy suggestion is the correct immediate step; and ’s SpinRite experiences are useful context but SpinRite can be slow and will stress failing hardware, so prefer imaging first and consider professional recovery if the data is critical.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for DenisOxon

Hi,

Even though chkdsk says it is unreadable can you read it from windows explorer ?

Have you also tried putting disk in external caddy and reading from another PC ?

Denis

Member Avatar for GrimJack

Hi,

Even though chkdsk says it is unreadable can you read it from windows explorer ?

Have you also tried putting disk in external caddy and reading from another PC ?

Denis

err, I should have been more specific, I guess - I click past the chkdsk at startup now (so I don't see the errors <grin>) and everything seems okay but I worry about the replicant drive. To be honest, much as I worry about the drive crashing/trashing my data, I can't stop myself from playing Crysis which is on that drive. As I said, I just purchased SpinRite, and plan on running it soonest but I worry about running it before I get rid of the replicant. I don't even understand how/why Windoze sees it as 2 drives.
<<couple of days pass here>>
So, to sum up, the drive is working okay as long as I don't re-boot, I am gamer who would rather game than try to figure out what is killing his drive, and i am going to fire up Crysis again real soon (I am working 12 hour days again and I need to kill things at home so I don't at work).

Member Avatar for DenisOxon

A suggestion - backup everything to external disk before doing any changes so you don't loose anything.

Denis

Member Avatar for caperjack

i used Spinrite many times in years gone by, but last time was 2005 ,one thing i will say its a good program but on large drives it will take days to run full through and may not do what you are looking to do .its a data recovery tool ,will recover data and write 0's to bad sector's so windows doesn't use that sector any more ,

Member Avatar for darsh999

Well for that i use spinrite and every time it gives +ve results

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.