How To Fix A Cyclic Redundancy Check Error On Your Hard Disk

Have you ever tried to use your previously working hard drive and you received an error message "Read Disk Error or Cyclic Redundancy Check" A Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) is an error checking technique used by computers, specifically the hard drives or optical disks (i.e DVD/CD). A Cyclic Redundancy Check error is caused when data on the hard-drive or DVD becomes corrupt.

1. Check the cause. In the case the CRC error was thrown by the hard drive, the cause is likely data being incorrectly written to the hard drive. This can be caused by either the operating system being corrupt, or a power loss.
   
   

   
2. 
   
   To fix a hard disk CRC error, run the CHKDSK application. In the "My Computer" folder, right click the affected hard drive and click properties.
   
   

   
3. 
   
   (In most of the cases this doesn't work because from GUI It won't show all the properties of the disk; It will end-up without doing any disk check. The alternative to this step is execute commands from command prompt as below:
   

   • 1. Run CMD as an Administrator
     
     
   • 2. type chkdsk G: /f /r ( 'G' signifies the affected Drive).
     
     
   • 3. Run DiskPart utility from the same command prompt type DiskPart
     
     
   • 4. Once utility is loaded run "rescan" command. This command locates new disks that might have been added to the computer.
     
     
   • 5. Hopefully problem would be resolved and you would be able to explore your disk.
     
     
4. 
   
   You can trace the logs of chkdsk utility from Right click on
   
   

   
5. 
   
   'My Computer' -> Manage -> Event Management -> Application logs.
   
   

   
6. 
   
   No need to follow below steps.
7. 
   
   #*You will be informed that you need to restart the computer to perform the check, click the schedule check button, then restart the computer.
8. 
   
   Enter the "Tools" tab and click the "Check Now" button. A small windows will appear, make sure the "Automatically check for filesystem errors" box and the "Find and repair bad sectors" box is checked. Then click start.
   
   

   
9. 
   
   Note when it can't be fixed. In the case that an optical disk (i.e., a DVD/BD/CD disk) is reporting a CRC error, there is no way to fix this. If you burned data to the disk yourself, try burning said data to another disk, this time at a lower speed. 4x is the recommended speed, especially when burning operating systems (i.e an Ubuntu LiveCD) to a disk. The higher the speed at which the data is burned, the higher the chances errors may be written to the disk.
   
   
   
   

   
   
   
   
   Remember that when this happens, its a sign that your HDD is failing and make sure you plan to replace it. For more info or other details, feel free to drop your question on the comment box or send me an email. Information from wikihow was used on this post