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I have an external USB drive, formatted as NTFS. It has started to fail, and has a number of bad sectors. I have been able to recover most of the data, but one directory was giving errors so I ran CHKDSK /f on the disk.

CHKDSK did not complete, failing because it ran out of space (there was at the time around 40gb free out of 500gb). After it ran, the problematic directory became empty, and CHKDSK left a found.000 file in the root. I think normally this would be a directory full of .chk files, but in this case the found.000 file itself is corrupt - in info screen, it shows a "size" of "17356456 bytes (,.))/0(,0 bytes)" but "size on disk" of 4.00kb. So even the actual size can't be figured out by the OS.

I have now deleted some additional files to give the disk more space, but CHKDSK will not complete (it hangs). I'm wondering if there is some way I can un-corrupt this found.000 file, as I suspect it will contain the missing files from the directory in question.

Any ideas?

karlos
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    Not possible. Delete the file and run `chkdsk` again. If the disk is starting to fail it would be a good time to backup. You might also want check your hard drives for SMART errors [How can I read my hard drive's SMART status in Windows 7?](http://superuser.com/q/29240), and [What is the easiest method of checking SMART status for your hard drive?](http://superuser.com/q/14803) – DavidPostill Apr 21 '16 at 16:19
  • https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-recover-chk-files-created-by-chkdsk-and-scandisk/ – Moab Apr 21 '16 at 16:38
  • Note: I will be follow instructions for reading the .chk files, if I can un-corrupt the found.000 folder - but it seems corrupt for now and I can't open it. That's the trick - but I feel like it contains, somehow, the missing data. I am going to toss the drive as it's definitely dying; just hoping I can save a few more files... – karlos Apr 22 '16 at 00:03
  • @Moab I don't think this is a duplicate of that question. That one explains what the files are, while this question wants to fix a broken one. – Ben N Apr 22 '16 at 23:06
  • I shows you how to recover files in the 000 folder. – Moab Apr 22 '16 at 23:31

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