[darkop16]

hey,

Im having a problem with an external hard drive. Every time I try to defrag or analyze it, I get a message saying something along the lines: "Disk check is scheduled on this drive....please run Chkdsk /f (drive letter)."

Ive tried going to start -> run and inputing Chkdsk /f (might not be the exact command but i used the one that was given to me in the error message). Command prompt then gives me something along the lines:

"The type of file system is NTFS
Cannot lock current drive.

Disk Check failed because the volume is being used by another process. Do you want to schedule a disk check on the next reboot. Y/N: "

Ive exited out of all the programs i can (anti-virus, firewall) and tried again, no luck. Ive tried yes and rebooting and letting it disk check on reboot but i end up back to square one (first paragraph). Ive even tried no and when i rebooted with the drive still plugged in, it still did a check disk.

I also tried doing a manual check disk by going to my computer -> right clicking the drive -> properties -> tools tab -> check disk. Ive tried it with none of the options chosen and both options chosen. Still end up back to square one.

Im at the point of just using an old hard drive (smaller then the other but at least ill save a good chuck of the data) and moving most of the files to it then format the drive completely and move what files i could save on the old drive back to the newly formated drive. But i wanted to throw this out there incase someone knows another way around this.

Thanks,
dark

update: I just figured out f was not the correct drive letter for the hard drive in question. So I tried Chkdsk /I and it went through a read-only check disk and completed...sadly I still cannot defrag the hard drive. But going back to Chkdsk /f...I think f was a parameter and not a drive letter but i don't know how to tell it which drive to run a full disk check on (tried Chkdsk /f I (I is the correct drive letter), Chkdsk /f /I but it didn't do anyting. It prob. doesn't matter since its the same process as just doing it through the drive prop. -> tools tab -> check disk with all the options checked.