Need help getting rid of corrupt file fragments on internal ExFAT drive

[stardust4ever]

So I was rendering some Kalles Fraktaller video frames some time ago when an uncorrectible error caused my Windows 7 PC to crash. This left "dirty" file fragments on the 6Gb ExFAT internal drive that I use to back up my primary drive as well as store Fractal Iteration movie Frames on.

Every time I boot my Windows 7 desktop PC, the OS does not grant me write access to the drive because "the volume is dirty". After running Scandisk, it temporarily fixes the drive permitting me to use it properly.

Scandisk creates a file folder found.000/ or found.001/ etc, with about 41 file fragments contained within, each occupying zero kb of actual data. After running Scandisk, I am able to delete the contents of previous found.00x/ folder, but the OS will not allow me to delete the current folder, even when I use the disk cleanup utility.

I gain read and write access to the drive after running scandisk, but as soon as I shut down and reboot the PC, the drive is read only again and I have to run scandisk to fix it. Every time the error report indicates that it has found errors in files contained in the previous found directory, and has saved those "lost fragments" in a new one, which are the same dirty files which cannot be deleted or altered.

How can I permanently remove these fragments so I don't have to keep running disk scan every time I want to use the drive? I've thought about getting an external drive and backing up the contents, but I don't have a drive large enough to copy off the contents atm, and if my PC ever crashed again, there would likely be more file fragments to clean up.

I've seen this issue online with people complaining about not being able to use ExFAT formatted external drives after they were improperly disconnected, but no real solutions to permanently fix the issue. My main reasoning for using ExFAT instead of NTFS on an internal drive was so I could read and write files to it if I ever decided to dual boot my desktop with Linux.

Does anybody have a solution that does not involve reformatting the drive? Thanks...

[Sabine]

Found this pointing towards GNU licensed partition editor gparted (hopefully also working/available for win7) in the comments section of a How-To involving juggling with HEX editors, which may be not your first choice...

boisecoder 4 weeks ago

Besides the mentioned Win7 and XP, this “false dirty bit” problem is even more of a problem on Windows 10. Besides never clearing the dirty bit (if you even once ask it to run chkdsk on next reboot the OS will never clear the bit), Windows 10 also *_will not truly shut down_* unless you hold down the shift key while clicking Shutdown. As others have done I had to find other ways to clear that bit. Using a hex editor on the partition table would not be my top choice — what worked for me is the “gparted” partition editor, available under the GNU licensing agreement.
Some folks have mentioned Hiren’s Boot CD, which — at least the version I have — includes the “gparted” (oddly I found it under “DOS Programs” on Hiren’s boot menu). Another way to get to it is with dual-boot Linux (which was my situation), or a Live CD. When you run gparted, highlight the partition of interest — presumably an NTFS or FAT filesystem — then right-click and choose “Check”. At the end of the checking it will (assuming the filesystem is in fact clean, which is often the case) clear the dirty bit (yes!). Once again, if you’re on Windows 10, be sure you held down the shift key while clicking Shutdown.

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/manually-reset-or-clear-dirty-bit-in-windows-without-chkdsk/2/

Hope this is helpful and good luck!

[3dickulus]

clearing the "dirty" bit may only be temporary as the OS might reset it as soon as it finds a dirty file

this might help
[Solved] Using Testdisk to recover disappeared files [exFAT]
you can find the program here http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

There is also know problems when multiple threads write data to ExFAT partitions, this may have caused the problem in the first place.
If the damage is messy you might have to recover what you can, backup and (ugh!) reinitialize the device with a more stable format, then restore.

[stardust4ever]

Found this pointing towards GNU licensed partition editor gparted (hopefully also working/available for win7) in the comments section of a How-To involving juggling with HEX editors, which may be not your first choice...
 https://www.raymond.cc/blog/manually-reset-or-clear-dirty-bit-in-windows-without-chkdsk/2/

Hope this is helpful and good luck!

Thanks for the link but I noticed some issues...

• Firstly, that article makes no mention of ExFAT formatted drives, only FAT32 and NTFS.

• Secondly, this "dirty" bit flag. Sounds like a bug in Windows Scandisk if it is applying the dirty bit right back to the file fragments it supposedly found. Seems to me if Scandisk has found errors and fixed them all, the "dirty" bit should have been removed. Given it's a known issue with Windows 7, 8, and 10 and ExFAT drives, seems Microsoft should have fixed it already, but cannot be arsed to do so.

• Thirdly, I am not about to compromise my system by manually adjusting bits in the file tables of the drive using a damned hex editor. I do have some experience with using hex editors as I've dabbled with video game ROM hacking in the past, but I always make a backup before doing any file tampering. Unmounting a drive and making low-level modifications to indexes or tables on the actual drive using a hex editor seems like an incredibly fool-hearty approach, and liable to permanently corrupt the data present on the drive such that nothing short of a full format will make it usable again. That seems like a great way to destroy your data and I'm not going down that route...
  

Is there a third party check disk utility that runs on windows, preferably free? A simple Checkdisk replacement I can download from SourceForge for free and run once to simply remove the dirty flag, since the Windows tool blows hard. A Linux live boot CD may also be an option but not one I've given much thought too. I would need a GUI interface to fix the drive since I'm completely ignorant on how to use a command line.

[stardust4ever]

clearing the "dirty" bit may only be temporary as the OS might reset it as soon as it finds a dirty file

this might help
[Solved] Using Testdisk to recover disappeared files [exFAT]
you can find the program here http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

There is also know problems when multiple threads write data to ExFAT partitions, this may have caused the problem in the first place.
If the damage is messy you might have to recover what you can, backup and (ugh!) reinitialize the device with a more stable format, then restore.

I did lose some stuff at some point. There was about 200-300 Gb worth of data spread across the found.00x directories which I removed running disk cleanup. I have no idea what the data was or where it came from. Much of the junk stored on the ExFAT drive is backups (backups as in direct copying of files rather than a utility) of data from my laptop and desktop primary hard drives, and the fractal frames iteration data, which is much too large to store anywhere else.

The corruption was initially the result of an unrecoverable CPU error causing a reboot of the system. Once scandisk put "dirty" file fragments on the volume, it has been impossible to keep it clean without running scandisk before every time I want to use the drive. As soon as I shut down the computer, I lose write access upon boot until I run scandisk again.

I just want to permanently delete the "dirty" file fragments and be able to use my drive again without running scandisk every single freakking time I want to transfer some files or write to it. Currently I have 41 file fragments in found.001/ which are dirty. They are all 0kb reported size and everytime I run scandisk, it simply makes "dirty" copies of the these empty files to a new found.00x/ directory. And it's super annoying to have to run scandisk every time I need write access to my hard drive. It takes like 40 minutes and probably isn't good for long term health to have to scan it all the freakking time.

Worst case scenario, I buy a portable 6TB external drive, quick format it NTFS, then copy everything to the new drive, full format the internal drive to NTFS, then copy everything back over to the internal.

Not sure if ExFAT sucks as a drive format, or if Windoze is just being a PITA, possibly a bit of both.

[Sabine]

Thanks for the link but I noticed some issues...

• Firstly, that article makes no mention of ExFAT formatted drives, only FAT32 and NTFS.

• Secondly, this "dirty" bit flag. Sounds like a bug in Windows Scandisk if it is applying the dirty bit right back to the file fragments it supposedly found. Seems to me if Scandisk has found errors and fixed them all, the "dirty" bit should have been removed. Given it's a known issue with Windows 7, 8, and 10 and ExFAT drives, seems Microsoft should have fixed it already, but cannot be arsed to do so.

• Thirdly, I am not about to compromise my system by manually adjusting bits in the file tables of the drive using a damned hex editor. I do have some experience with using hex editors as I've dabbled with video game ROM hacking in the past, but I always make a backup before doing any file tampering. Unmounting a drive and making low-level modifications to indexes or tables on the actual drive using a hex editor seems like an incredibly fool-hearty approach, and liable to permanently corrupt the data present on the drive such that nothing short of a full format will make it usable again. That seems like a great way to destroy your data and I'm not going down that route...
  

Is there a third party check disk utility that runs on windows, preferably free? A simple Checkdisk replacement I can download from SourceForge for free and run once to simply remove the dirty flag, since the Windows tool blows hard. A Linux live boot CD may also be an option but not one I've given much thought too. I would need a GUI interface to fix the drive since I'm completely ignorant on how to use a command line.

I was not referring to the article, which indeed is about editing the bit, but to the comment and in it the mention of patition editor gparted which can check partitions and fix the problem (not just resetting the bit). The article is about ntfs and fat, but that was about editing the bit.
Sadly gparted cannot check exfat partitions I just found out:( I hope you have more luck with testdisk (3dickulus'tip), though as I read it that too cannot, like gparted, check exfat (can - again like gparted - move and copy files and such on exfat though).

Problems with the Microsoft dirty bit are seemingly existing for some time...