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I have a "bad sectored" hard drive and going to back up its data, i decided to run chkdsk /f /r command for fixing errors on most problematic partition and making disk stable for a while. but while scanning check disk says: "disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters" for several times and ends up with an "unspecified error occured" message.

1 - WHICH partition does first chkdsk message refers to? i read somewhere its related to Windows partition, and others say it refers to scanned partition. (they are on different drives)

2 - Free space of Win partition: 100 GB and scanned partition: more than 300GB , it seems this error actually refers to something different? (no idea)

I also checked this on Windows recovery options (by windows installation boot disc) and still same error.

Fredi
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    Look in the [Event Log](http://mywindowshub.com/read-event-viewer-log-check-disk-chkdsk-windows-7-windows-8/) – DavidPostill Dec 24 '17 at 22:14
  • @DavidPostill Good point, although i could not figure out problems via chkdsk event log, anyway i found exact error: **A disk read error occurredc0000185 Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xc05cdc00 for 0x400 bytes. The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 405E of name .** – Fredi Dec 24 '17 at 22:26
  • Normally the log tells you which disk it is checking at the start of the log ... – DavidPostill Dec 24 '17 at 22:32
  • You could also try chkdsk on each disk individually and see which one fails. – DavidPostill Dec 24 '17 at 22:32
  • You can also check for SMART errors to see which disk is failing. See [How can I read my hard drive’s SMART status in Windows 7?](//superuser.com/q/29240), and [What is the easiest method of checking SMART status for your hard drive?](//superuser.com/q/14803). – DavidPostill Dec 24 '17 at 22:34
  • @DavidPostill I did not run check tool on whole disk, it was only on most error throwing partition (i edited question for adding this ..) . but still SMART check is good suggest.. thanks. – Fredi Dec 24 '17 at 22:40

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The first thing that needs to be said is that absolutely, under no circumstances, should you run chkdsk /r on a bad hard drive to try to “make it stable,” unless dead as a doornail is the desired stable state you are looking for.

If you do run chkdsk without specifying the drive to run a check on, then chkdsk will run on whatever the active volume is when you type the command. If the command line says C:\Windows\System32> and you enter chkdsk /r it’s going to run on the C: drive.

The error message that you’re receiving may be erroneous, but it is clear in its intention. New clusters have to be allocated to replace bad clusters and there aren’t enough free ones available. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc975119.aspx

But, because you’ve already indicated the drive is failing, and chkdsk /r is the worst possible thing you could ever run on a failing drive, it’s not surprising you are getting spurious errors back.

If you need help recovering data from a failing drive, then do some research and use the proper tools to do so. Ask additional questions if necessary. But, stop trying to run chkdsk on it, because it will NOT fix the drive so you can copy data off of it.

Appleoddity
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  • Thanks for informative answer, `/f /r` way was helpful for me on other drive/problem, but in this drive i have more important data and you are right about avoiding this way. Other than data backup, also i want to make drive stable for my daily usage, you think deleting or moving out lots of data on problematic partition, can result more effective check-disk / fix, or its better to think about new drive? – Fredi Dec 25 '17 at 12:55