Fix: chkdsk an unspecified error occurred

Partitioning your hard disk into smaller volumes is an encouraged practice if you actively used your hard disk to save and back up data. This way, you can save valuable pieces of information if one drive crashes. This is owed to the fact that the partitioned volumes act as an independent storage locations.

Several things can cause the crashing of a partition. The wrong shutdown procedure, especially when writing or reading from the partition exposes it to crushes. Corrupt or infected boot information can cause your drive to crash too. The first thing you will notice about a crushed partition is that it won’t open, or it takes painfully long to open. You might also get errors like ‘The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable’.

The first reasonable thing to do after a partition fails to open is to run a chkdsk in command prompt with the /f extension (chkdsk /f) to scan and fix errors. However, chkdsk returns another error stating “An unspecified error occurred” with error code (726173642e637878 25f) or (75736e6a726e6c2e 4f6) or something of that order depending on your hard disk. The somewhat random errors codes indicate that your partition failed to initialize and your hard disk could be failing.

If chkdsk fails with such an error, the best thing to do is to use a data recovery tool to recover your data and format the partition and see if it resets. You might need to install a new hard disk to avoid future problems if your hard disk is indeed dying. If you are using an external hard disk, you might want to check the connection cable first or the SATA cable for your internal hard disk.

Use MiniTool Power Data Recovery software to recover your data and format your partition

For this procedure, you will need another working storage space equal to the storage space of your partition; or at least equal to the data you stored in that partition.

1. Download MiniTool Power Data Recovery from here
2. Install and launch the MiniTool Power Data Recovery tool
3. In the main window, choose an Appropriate Function Module: in this case choose ‘Damaged partition recovery’
4. Select the Target Device where data loss appears to Scan it
5. Click Open: This helps to quickly scan and open the selected device. Compared with “Full Scan”, it saves a lot of time but may not find your needed files or recovered files cannot be opened correctly. First of all, you can try using this feature to see whether desired files are found and correct. If not, go back to this interface and choose “Full Scan” to make a deep scanning.
6. After a successful scan, all the found files will be shown. Once files are found, check and then save them to a specified location by clicking the “Save” button which is at the lower right corner: Choose your error free location and click ‘OK’ and wait for the recovery to complete.
7. After the data has been recovered you might want to try formatting your drive. To format your partition, Press Windows Key + R to open run, type DISKMGMT.MSC and hit enter to open the disk management utility.
8. Right click on your partition and choose “Format”, if it returns an error try the “Delete Volume” option and confirm that you want to delete that drive.
9. After deleting the volume, right click on it and select “New simple volume.”
10. Click ‘Next’ three times and in the last page select “Format the Volume with the Following Settings.” Usually, Windows hard drives use NTFS. Click next and finish the formatting. Your drive should appear on the Windows/File explorer.

If the problem persists or reappears, we advise that you replace your dying hard disk before if cause more serious problems.