Forced Shutdown or restart

[winkawak]

This probably happens once or twice a year but during that time startup for windows 7pro gets stuck at loading screen. I had to force shutdown to reboot the computer. I was wondering if it causes hdd file corruptions doing so? I didnt see hdd activity blinker flashing as i forced shutdown. Any good alternative software besides checkdisk?

[kelvinhall05]

Try reinstalling.

[winkawak]

4 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Try reinstalling.

not my question if you bothered to read for 10 second

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, winkawak said:

not my question if you bothered to read for 10 second

Yes, actually, I did read the post. If it was file corruption you'd see the problem much more often than you do, and you'd notice it at the same time (every startup/restart). If it was your HDD failing then it would fail to start up much more often, and Windows would run so slow you'd know something was wrong.

[winkawak]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Yes, actually, I did read the post. If it was file corruption you'd see the problem much more often than you do, and you'd notice it at the same time (every startup/restart). If it was your HDD failing then it would fail to start up much more often, and Windows would run so slow you'd know something was wrong.

still not my question lol

[The King of the Undead]

there is a chance but probably not often.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, winkawak said:

This probably happens once or twice a year but during that time startup for windows 7pro gets stuck at loading screen. I had to force shutdown to reboot the computer. I was wondering if it causes hdd file corruptions doing so? I didnt see hdd activity blinker flashing as i forced shutdown. Any good alternative software besides checkdisk?

If you want to check the HDD for errors, use any program that supports SMART tests. I would recommend using the Diagnostics Utility from your HDD manufacturer (WD has LifeGuard and Seagate has SeaTools, for example) - there's usually a Windows installer available on their site.

 

I would also download CrystalDiskInfo and check for SMART errors - that doesn't require to run any tests. Run that, then run the "Long" test from the diagnostic utility for your HDD.

 

In terms of an alternate to CheckDisk checking for corrupted files? No, I don't believe so.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, winkawak said:

This probably happens once or twice a year but during that time startup for windows 7pro gets stuck at loading screen. I had to force shutdown to reboot the computer. I was wondering if it causes hdd file corruptions doing so? I didnt see hdd activity blinker flashing as i forced shutdown. Any good alternative software besides checkdisk?

A forced shutdown is a crap-shoot.

 

Under ideal conditions, pressing and holding the power button for 4 seconds is equal to yanking the power cord from the wall. With mechanical drives this always results in damage or data corruption due to unflushed buffers. In the older days (eg AT power supplies with mechanical switches), you used to have to park the hard drive heads (PC/XT/AT machines) in the 5.25" hard drives so they wouldn't "land" on the surface, or with IDE hard drives, give the hard drive enough time to flush the buffers. So if you pulled the power while it was writing, whatever it was writing would be gone, and if it was writing to the FAT (File Allocation Table) you could easily wipe out a chunk of the hard drive since there are two copies of the FAT, and the writing might "miss" it's target if the power is removed.

 

With that said. NVMe/SSD drives do not have this issue at all, they still have the "unflushed buffer" issue, however since there is no mechanical parts, at worst, you lose the active file being written. If you pull the power while writing to a SSD, it is however possible to erase the entire drive, which is why the "shutdown" process powers the drive off itself. 

 

I've only ever experienced one mechanical drive being damaged by removing the power,and that was due to a blackout which might have been how the blackout happened rather than anything having to do with the loss of power. 

 

Now, Windows is pretty good about repairing the drive with just chkdsk. Older versions of windows want you to run scandisk (Which scanned the entire physical surface of the drive) when a shutdown wasn't clean, and then again goes back to the potential for a "miss" write in the FAT. I've never seen a drive newer than 2000 have physically bad sectors unless it was a laptop, and even then, physically bad sectors typically require something bad to happen to the drive while it's spinning. Like having a pet knock it over. 

 

If you check the drive using crystaldisk info to read the SMART info you can check if the drive has ever reallocated sectors, and a drive that has used up it's spare sectors is a drive that should be replaced. That's about the extent of what you really should check for. You can use other programs to actually trigger the drive's internal surface scan via the SMART commands, and that will tell you if the drive has been damaged.

 

There are "bad" drives out there, so even though I haven't seen many bad drives, a lot of that is due to researching drives before purchase and avoiding ones with high failure rates (see backblaze's list https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/ ) 

[winkawak]

On 8/14/2019 at 1:15 PM, dalekphalm said:

If you want to check the HDD for errors, use any program that supports SMART tests. I would recommend using the Diagnostics Utility from your HDD manufacturer (WD has LifeGuard and Seagate has SeaTools, for example) - there's usually a Windows installer available on their site.

 

I would also download CrystalDiskInfo and check for SMART errors - that doesn't require to run any tests. Run that, then run the "Long" test from the diagnostic utility for your HDD.

 

In terms of an alternate to CheckDisk checking for corrupted files? No, I don't believe so.

 

On 8/14/2019 at 3:33 PM, Kisai said:

A forced shutdown is a crap-shoot.

 

Under ideal conditions, pressing and holding the power button for 4 seconds is equal to yanking the power cord from the wall. With mechanical drives this always results in damage or data corruption due to unflushed buffers. In the older days (eg AT power supplies with mechanical switches), you used to have to park the hard drive heads (PC/XT/AT machines) in the 5.25" hard drives so they wouldn't "land" on the surface, or with IDE hard drives, give the hard drive enough time to flush the buffers. So if you pulled the power while it was writing, whatever it was writing would be gone, and if it was writing to the FAT (File Allocation Table) you could easily wipe out a chunk of the hard drive since there are two copies of the FAT, and the writing might "miss" it's target if the power is removed.

 

With that said. NVMe/SSD drives do not have this issue at all, they still have the "unflushed buffer" issue, however since there is no mechanical parts, at worst, you lose the active file being written. If you pull the power while writing to a SSD, it is however possible to erase the entire drive, which is why the "shutdown" process powers the drive off itself. 

 

I've only ever experienced one mechanical drive being damaged by removing the power,and that was due to a blackout which might have been how the blackout happened rather than anything having to do with the loss of power. 

 

Now, Windows is pretty good about repairing the drive with just chkdsk. Older versions of windows want you to run scandisk (Which scanned the entire physical surface of the drive) when a shutdown wasn't clean, and then again goes back to the potential for a "miss" write in the FAT. I've never seen a drive newer than 2000 have physically bad sectors unless it was a laptop, and even then, physically bad sectors typically require something bad to happen to the drive while it's spinning. Like having a pet knock it over. 

 

If you check the drive using crystaldisk info to read the SMART info you can check if the drive has ever reallocated sectors, and a drive that has used up it's spare sectors is a drive that should be replaced. That's about the extent of what you really should check for. You can use other programs to actually trigger the drive's internal surface scan via the SMART commands, and that will tell you if the drive has been damaged.

 

There are "bad" drives out there, so even though I haven't seen many bad drives, a lot of that is due to researching drives before purchase and avoiding ones with high failure rates (see backblaze's list https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/ ) 

Thanks very informative