Hdd Issues

So I'm having issues with one of my external HDD as the title suggests.

Before I get into it, let me just say that I built my own PC so this isn't a brand rig.

• Windows 10
• i7-7740x 4.30 GHz
• 2x 16GB Corsair Vengeance RBG
• 4x Western Digital Elements external HDD 4TB USB 3

I think this is enough to list out as my specs, if not please let me know.

The issue:
I have one of my externals as a video database for work related stuff. At one point I was on Holidays in Thailand and took a few of my HDD with me so I could do some editing while I'm there.

For some reason it got errors despite me always ejecting the USB from Windows or I would disconnect the cable when the Laptop was turned off. Either way, I did a dskchck on Windows and apparently fixed the errors. After that the HDD worked just fine, until it didn't. Probably a year after this, some of the videos started not working properly. I can't view them on VLC, nor open them on Premier Pro.

Opening a video file on VLC will play the video until it freezes. It completely bricks my VLC and cannot be terminated on Task Manager. While this happens it also freezes the Explorer window where my videos are. There were times where it would freeze other things that aren't related to the viewing of said videos. For example, once my sound stopped working because of the freeze from copying a "broken" video file out of the problematic HDD, I couldn't even view a Youtube video because it didn't recognise my sound device. (My sound device is a Topping D10 Balanced DAC)
Note: If I waited long enough, the freeze would resolve itself and Explorer would become responsive again and VLC terminated. But I still can't view said videos.

I've tried to do a dskchck and yields no issues or corruption identified. Frustrated, I bought a new HDD, this time a 16TB Seagate EXOS Sata 3 and attempted to copy all my videos to the new HDD. This worked, but the video files that were "broken" couldn't be copied. So now, my old HDD has only the "broken" video files on there.

I've tried software that claims to repair video files, but to no avail, as dragging the video file will most of the times freeze my Explorer. I've even tried online pages that claim to fix video files but ends up the same, freezes mid progression. I've tried to defrag my HDD, but says all the files are unmovable. I've tried opening the files on Premier Pro or Camtasia and export it as a new mp4 file, it also freezes mid way through. I even used VLC to attempt to fix the file by going to Media > Convert/Save and try it this way (since some of my google searches would suggest me to do this), but it didn't work. I tried more sophisticated dskchck software downloaded from this site, no errors found.

I've exhausted all the solutions that I could find and think of, so this is my last resort. Anyone has any idea what's going on here and any other solutions that I didn't find or think of?

I appreciate the time taken to read through all of this, so thanks in advance.

 

First, just to ensure no confusion, it is chkdsk for "check disk", not dskchck. And the proper command at an elevated cmd prompt would be chkdsk /r.

Fragmentation, and thus defragging would not cause a file to be unreadable, or fix an unreadable file. But for future reference for the unmovable files, next time you might try starting it from Safe Mode.

Have you tried connecting to a different computer? If you know someone running Linux, you might try that.

Sadly, it does appear those that are "broken" are indeed corrupt beyond repair. Just another reason way a robust backup plan involves multiple backup copies on different storage media.

 

Dammit, I knew something was fishy when I was typing it, turns out my feeling was right and I swapped the words. My bad. But yes, just for clarity, I did mean chkdsk, not dskchck.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, I shall try them out.

 

Keep us posted.