How to fix Cyclic Redundancy Check issue in external hard drives

Cyclic Redundancy Check or CRC is a tool that Windows uses to check the hard drives to verify whether the drive is working properly or not. Usually, this error occurs while you try to move some files or at the time of extracting large compressed files. Starting from registry corruption, low free space on the disk to misconfigured system files, there can be almost anything behind the CRC issue on your system.

Workarounds –

Before you proceed to the main solutions, you should try these easy and quick workarounds.

1. Rebooting the system may help you resolve the issue.

2. If you are working with a removable drive, you can detach the drive and reattach it. Check if the USB drive stops showing up CRC issue.

Test if this is working or not.

 

Fix 1 – Try the error checking tool

Windows has an error-checking tool for the drive.

1. Open the File Explorer.

2. If you go to the “This PC” on the left-hand pane. You can see all your drives there. Now, right-click on the drive and tap “Properties“.



 

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3. Next, head on to the “Tools” section.

4. Here, you will find the ‘Error checking’ section. Just tap “Check“.

 

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6. You may or may not see this “You don’t need to scan this drive” message. But, you have to scan this drive.

7. Now, tap “Scan and repair drive” to repair the drive.

 

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After the tool runs, test if this works out.

8. Tap “Close” once the test is over.



 

Close It

 

Try to access the files or transfer some files to the drive. If the CRC mismatch still shows up, go for the next fix.

 

Fix 2 – Use the chkdsk command

If the error checking tool doesn’t work, you can use the chkdsk command.

Step 1

You have to know the drive letter of the drive. If you already know this, you can skip this step.

1. So, open the File Explorer by pressing the Win key+E key combinations.

2. Then, go to the “This PC” on the left pane.

3. Check the drive letter of the drive that you are facing this CRC error.

It is “F:” in our case.

 

F Drive Letter

 

Once you have done that, feel free to close the File Explorer.

 

Step 2

1. Just type “cmd” in the search box.

2. Then, right-tap the “Command Prompt” and tap “Run as administrator“.

 

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This way you can open the Command Prompt as an administrator.

3. When it does, just write this command, modify it and press Enter.

chkdsk drive letter: /f /r /x

[

You have to replace the drive letter with the drive letter that you have noted before.

Such as – If the drive letter is “F:“, the command will be like this –

chkdsk F: /f /r /x

]

 

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Let Windows find and fix the faults on the drive. Test if this works out for you. Once the scan is complete, you may close the terminal.

Check if you are still facing the CRC error or not.

 

Fix 3 – Run a System File Checker scan

You can always run an SFC check to let Windows handle the scanning operation and fix the issue.

1. You can right-tap the Windows key and tap the “Run” option.

2. Then, type “cmd” and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter keys together to access the terminal with administrative rights.

 

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3. We are going to run the SFC scan first. So, paste this command and hit Enter to start an SFC scan.

sfc /scannow

 

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Wait for the SFC scan to compete.

4. Then, You can run the DISM tool check with just a single code. Just, right down this line in the terminal and hit Enter.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

 



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Let Windows complete the DISM scan.

After the scanning process reaches 100%, close the Command Prompt and reboot your system.

 

Fix 4 – Format the drive

If nothing else resolves the issue, you have to format the drive.

NOTE – Formatting does wipe out all the data of the drive. So, if you have something useful you should take a backup of the data before you format the drive.

1. Just open the File Explorer page and head on to the “This PC” to locate the drive.

2. Now, once you have found it, right-tap the drive and tap “Format“.

 

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3. When the formatting of the drive page opens up, tap on “Format” to format the drive.

 

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This will quickly format the drive. So, just wait till it is over and then, test if the CRC error is still there or not.