can you chkdsk from a windows vm? - eviltoast

I need to repair a drive with chkdsk and don’t have access to windows

edit: hopefully, I only have to do it once. I will search for someone with a real windows machine. It’s not worth the trouble =(

  • palordrolap@kbin.social
    2·
    11 months ago

    Tentatively yes.

    I did once manage to mount an external USB NTFS drive to a VirtualBox-hosted copy of Windows 7 and was actually able to defrag it. I assume I also ran a quick disk check before that, but it was a long time ago now.

    Before I did it, I backed up everything important off the drive to another location just in case. I’d recommend you do the same.

    As to how I did it, I’m afraid I don’t remember, but it can’t have been that difficult. There may have been some kind of raw mount option in the virtualisation software.

    The other potential obstacle is the fact that things have moved on since I did it. Newer Windows / NTFS might be not be as easy to fool into accepting a drive over weird virtualisation pathways. Or the virtualisation software might not allow it as easily or at all.

    Hopefully that’s not the case.