CHKDSK error: not enough disk space?!?!?

This dude's laptop was not loading to Windows; it crashed to BSOD "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME 0x000000ED". No big deal, I've fixed this a bazillion times. So I boot to an XP CD, go to the Recovery Console and run chkdsk c: /r. So far so good. Knowing that chkdsk takes time, I went on to other things. I checked back about 5 or 10 minutes later and chkdsk was done. No errors, no problems, etc. :confused This seemed odd to me 'cuz I've NEVER seen chkdsk finish in under 25min. So rebooted and still the BSOD. I pulled the drive (a 120gb SATA) and hooked it up as a secondary drive on my XP machine and ran chkdsk h: /r from a command prompt window. All went well. Sort of. About 4 hours in, chkdsk errored out stating that there wasn't enough free space on the drive. :confused The HD has about 80gb free!!!! I attached a screenshot below.....

Any ideas?

 

what i did in similar situations is pull off all available data that was of any interest and wipe it with a full format and re check it for physical errors

this has happened to me 2 times and both were due to faulty hard ware 1 of the times i could not get through a long format and had to use quick just to get it to where it needed to be so i could check it

to me you all ready tried the most direct logical ways to see whats wrong so i would wipe and redo the steps you already tried and see if you get similar results
usually when you start get space errors that don't make sense because you know how much you have its a hardware issue (providing the bois is agreeing with you and in good order)

 

I'll have to say that "Chkdsk knows exactly what it's doing."

It must remove whatever is on those 115,891 bad clusters and copy it elsewhere. Obviously it thinks there is not enough GOOD space left to do this.

With that many bad clusters on any HD, just all of a sudden, I'd have to say that the HD is failing beyond recovery.
(I sure wouldn't want MY data on that drive! )

The best advise so far is to copy the good data off of that drive and then .....

I'd have to say, "Scrap It!" and put the OS and data onto a NEW drive.

I know that's not fun, but it's probably going to be your only solution.

Good Luck,
The Shadow :cool

 

:-D Yup... the drive is indeed failing. I ran a fitness test before CHKDSK and it didn't recognize the drive (which should have been a clue :-o ) so I hooked up the drive via USB to a different PC. Upon putting it back in the laptop from whence it originated, I now get SMART failure errors..... a new 250gb SATA is going in tomorrow. :-D

Thanks for the input, you guys were spot on!

[dlb]

 

Well, after you've worked on a few hundred failing drives over a twenty + year period, you'll be "Spot On" too.

Congrat's on the new drive. Sounds like a keeper.
I do hope you can save some of the data, at least, from the old drive.

It's problems like yours, that prompt me to say, "Backup, Backup, Backup!"

Good Luck,
The Shadow