How to find out WHICH drive has Errors ?

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Occasionally I get a message from Windows 10 informing me that one (or more) of my drives that has "drive errors". Unfortunately, Windows does NOT tell me, WHICH of my drives is corrupted. Is there an easy way to find out WHICH drive(s) is having problems?
(Why doesn't Microsoft give you that information right in the error message???)
Running CheckDisk on all 14 (yes - 14) volumes is far too time consuming. I currently use a work-around: A batch file that uses
"fsutil dirty query" for each of the drives. This will work as long as you run the batch file as administrator but it seems like a bit of a hack to me. Is there an easier / more elegant way of finding out which drive is corrupted?
 

Ian

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Is this an error entitled "Windows detected a hard disk problem" (or something similar)? There may be a "more info" or "show details" dropdown hidden at the bottom of the popup - there used to be in previous version of Windows, but I've not had this error in Windows 10 before (and can't easily generate it to check).

If so, it may be reading the status via S.M.A.R.T, so you may be able to read the drive status very quickly using a tool like CrystalDiskInfo (there are loads of SMART monitors):

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/
 
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My problem is similar to the ""Windows detected a hard disk problem" error - just the Windows 10 version thereof. (I did not take a screen print). If you leave it alone and just re-boot the computer, it will, on the next boot, run a CHKDSK on the faulty drive (so Windows KNOWS which drive is faulty - so why can't it tell me?). After it repairs the drive and Windows starts up, there will typically be a file called "found000" on the offending drive. Of course, I have to look at each one of the 14 drives to find it. This error shows up in the notification area on the right-hand side of the screen.
I have CrystalDiskInfo running but did not think of checking it the last time I encountered this error. One thing about CrystalDiskInfo: It gives you an icon in the task tray for each physical DRIVE. I am curious how it will react when a drive contains multiple PARTITIONS and only one of them has the "IsDirty" bit set. Unfortunately, this is not a problem that is easily replicated so I will have to wait until is happens again. (To be honest, I wouldn't be sorry if it doesn't).
Come to think of it, I think S.M.A.R.T attributes (which are the basis of CrystalDiskInfo's diagnostics) are set on a 'per physical drive' basis whereas the "Is Dirty bit" works on a 'per partition' basis. Also, S.M.A.R.T only looks at the hardware characteristics of the drive and, unlike the "Is Dirty bit" does not look at the file system. Thus S.M.A.R.T would not catch errors in the MFT which are the most common causes for the drive errors Windows detects.
 

Ian

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Yep, that's all correct re: SMART. :)

Do you think you may have a failing drive, or are you just having some un-clean shutdowns? It may be worth checking to see if you've got a drive with unusual bad blocks on it.

It's a shame as I don't think it'll be easy to advise as it's hard to try and replicate this error to test things out. I'd be really interested to see how this pans out, so please do let us know if you find a way to get to the bottom of it!
 
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I am quite sure it has "something" to with do un-clean shut downs. On a second machine (one with only 3 partitions - each on their own physical drive) it might be easier to track down. Here are my observations for THAT machine:
- The last time I received the "disk problem" message and re-booted, both drive "L" and drive "X" (but not "C") were supposedly checked and fixed BUT
- Once the machine rebooted, I ran a checkdisk on both "L" and "X" and BOTH drives were still dirty and needed to be fixed by running ChkDsk manually.
- On previous occasions - but not this time around - the files found to be damaged were ALL files created by Cybereason RansomFree. I wrote to Cybereason but never received a reply. I have since removed RansomFree, eliminating that program from the list of possible culprits.
- One idiosyncrasy of that machine: I frequently swap between two systems drives ("C") - One is a Samsung SSD, the other is a Crucial SSD. Both drives are fairly similar i.e. both are running the latest version of Windows 10 Pro 64 with all the latest updates.
- The problem NEVER involves any of the two "C" drives - it ALWAYS involves one or both of the other local drives ("L" = Local Data and "X" = Local Backups) [It's decidedly frustrating if you can't trust your backup drive!]
- ChkDsk usually shows that the problems are related to the file system rather than hardware related (i.e. no bad blocks) - I have to admit, I'm not as diligent as I should be when checking the output of ChkDsk - sometimes I'm in too much of a hurry and just want to get going....
 
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I just want to jump in here and say that I am experiencing the same issue. My main drive is C and is my Windows 10 disk. I am a Flight Sim user going way back so I have Flight Sim 9 on a seperate HDD which is D. I also have quite a few older games on another HDD running Windows 7 on drive F. When I want to use FS9 I boot into my Win XP drive. After I am finished I boot back into Win 10 drive for day to day things. Lately I get the same drive errors in Win 10 that I need to scan for disk errors. When I reboot scan disk always scans drive D and then C. It never tells me if there are errors or not. This only happens after booting into Win XP drive. I have run deep scans on all of my drives using the manufacturer's drive tests. They all come up clean. Like the OP I can not figure this one out. Win 10 is always the one complaining about drive problems. Never my other operating systems. I'm not sure if there is a fix for this but if one is ever found I would love to know. I guess I just want the OP to know they are not alone.
 
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Hi ram1220
I am not sure we have the same problem: You are running FS9 from your "D" drive under XP but have Win10 complaining. This is different from my problem in that my issues have nothing to do with the system drive.
Quite on the contrary: The system drive ("C") NEVER has any issues - it's the local data drives that get reported as being problematic.
 
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Sry I guess I am still a bit confused after reading your issue. I thought your Windows 10 drive is your main boot (system drive) and was complaining about your others drives. I'll just back away from this thread now.
 
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Hi ram1220
Let's try this again: In my case, Windows 10, running on drive "C", complains that drives OTHER than drive "C" are having problems.
In your case, Windows 10, running on drive "C" complains that other drives (i.e. the "D" drive) AND the "C" drive are having problems.
In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned that in at least one case, Windows 10 CLAIMED to have fixed drive problems but when I checked those drives, it turned out Windows 10 had NOT fixed them. You may want to try to run ChkDsk on both, your "C" and "D" Drives and see if after the next switch, the problem re-occurs.
 

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