How to Fix Corrupted Hard Drive Using CMD in Windows 11/10/8/7?

This page will demonstrate how to fix corrupted hard drive using CMD elaborately. A reliable tool-AOMEI Partition Assistant, which offers easier ways to repair the corrupted hard drive, will also be introduced.

Emily

By Emily / Updated on May 12, 2023

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Causes and symptoms of corrupted hard drive

Why the hard drive gets corrupted or crashed? Below are some main causes.

▸Logical damage: virus attack, bad sectors, unknown file system, disk is not formatted, raw file system, lost/corrupted partition table…

▸Physical damage: short-circuit failure, damaged chip, corrupted header, dropped from high places, degradation of moving parts in the hard disk over time…

▸Improper human operations: sudden power failure, removed without safe removal, shut down system improperly…

When the hard drive gets corrupted, you will notice the following symptoms or error messages.

▶Black screen appears after the system booting screen.

No bootable device found, computer cannot boot successfully.

▶Clicking or grinding sound from hard drive - it is going to die soon, or won't boot already

▶It takes a much longer time for accessing files and folders. Or the files and folders become invisible and corrupt.

▶The type of file system is raw, CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

▶“X:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”.

How to fix corrupted hard drive using CMD?

When your hard drive is corrupted, you can refer to the following content to  fix corrupted hard disk using Command Prompt. Before proceeding, you had better recover data from the damaged hard drive, and move them to another safe location.

To start the corrupted hard disk repair process, first of all, you should open Command Prompt as administrator (Click Search box, input Command Prompt, right-click the icon and choose Run as administrator. Or press Win+R, input "cmd" in the elevated Run dialogue and press on Enter).

Then, type the command (“chkdsk g: /f”) and press Enter to start the error checking and fixing process for your corrupted drive: 

Chkdsk Disk Error

Note: the g: is the drive letter of the damaged hard drive, the f means fixing errors on the disk.

You can add more parameters to the command to make the scan process more rigorous.

chkdsk g: /f /r /x”: /x locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. /r forces the volume to dismount before the scan if required.

Chkdsk Check Error

 

Free alternative to CMD: fix damaged hard drive more easily

If you think the process of how to fix corrupted hard drive using CMD (running CHKDSK.exe) is a little complicated, or you encounter “CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives” error message during the repairing process, you can turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, which can support Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, XP and Vista. It provides you with three different ways to repair damaged hard drive. Free download it and have a try now.

Download Freeware Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
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1. Check Partition for errors

Step1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the partition you want to check and select “Advanced”> “Check Partition”.

Check The C Partition

Step 2. In the pop-out window, you have three options available, check and fix error by using chkdsk.exe, check error only using chkdsk.exe, and find bad sectors. Choose one according to your needs and click “OK”. Then wait for the process to complete.

Check Partition And Fix Errors

Besides, you can also right-click the disk you want to scan and select the “Surface Test” to check disk error.

If checking and repairing disk/partition by chkdsk.exe fails, then you can consider the option of rebuilding the MBR of the damaged hard drive. Luckily, AOMEI Partition Assistant could also perform this task.

2. Rebuild MBR of corrupted hard drive

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click the corrupted disk and select “Rebuild MBR”.

Rebuild Data Disk Mbr

Step 2. Select a proper MBR type for your current operating system and click “OK”.

Choose Mbr Type

Step 3. In the main interface, click “Apply” on the top left corner to commit the pending operation.

Then, you can check whether the corrupted hard drive can be used normally again. If not, you can try to reformat it via this software.

3. Reformat the corrupted hard drive

Step 1. In the main interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click any partition of the corrupted disk and select “Format Partition”.

Format Partitoin

Step 2. Select a file system (ex: FAT32) and click “OK”.

Fat32 128gb Usb

Step 3. Click “Apply” to start formatting the partition.

Apply

Conclusion

Now, you know how to fix corrupted hard drive using CMD step by step. If you want to repair the damaged hard drive in an easier way, AOMEI Partition Assistant is a great choice. Moreover, its Professional Edition comes with more advanced functions like securely erasing SSD, clone MBR hard drive to GPT, convert hard drive between MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, optimizing SSD performance by 4K alignment and more.

Emily
Emily · Staff Editor
Emily is an English editor of AOMEI Technology; she has a great passion for providing easy solutions for people to tackle with all disk or partition management problems. In addition to writing articles about disk/partition management, she also edits great tutorials on how to back up and restore disk for data security. In her spare time, she loves to learn computer skill to improve herself or stay with her family to enjoy a good day.