I have a 1.5 TB Seagate hard drive that has triggered a chkdisk twice in the last two months. The first time, windows replaced security id with default security id for file xxx. I allowed it to finish, and the drive was unbootable.
I installed a new drive, installed OS (Windows 7 HP 64bit) and was able to at least pull the data after futzing with the security settings to take ownership. I have since just left the drive attached for additional storage.
Two days ago, this inactive storage drive again requires a check disk. What is causing this to happen?
Added details per comments and answers: Crystal Disk Info
2 Answers
It looks like the access control lists (ACLs) for the affected files are getting corrupted, which implies corruption of the Master File Table, a critical data structure used in the NTFS file system. More info on ACLs here.
The access control list of each file consists of a series of Security Identifiers (SID) each of which identify a user or group of users, and a set of permissions associated with each SID. This data is apparently getting corrupted and CHKDSK is assigning a default value as a result.
First, try reformatting the drive. If the problem persists, the underlying problem is probably a disk failure, with bad sectors located where the MFT or other key file system data structures is stored. You can use a disk information utility such as the open-source CrystalDiskInfo to read the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drive; a high reallocated or unrecoverable sector count (for which CrystalDiskInfo will return "Caution" or "Bad" for the drive health) indicates that the drive is failing and needs to be replaced.
S.M.A.R.T. information does not indicate a disk issue. Have you reformatted the drive and tried again? Corrupted data structures in the file system could be part of the issue. If the problem persists after reformatting the drive, it could be that the drive is failing anyway (try running a surface scan on the suspect drive), or there could be a memory problem (a tool like Memtest86+ would help here).
Upon further research, it seems I am mistaken about what is meant by a security ID. Nonetheless, some data structures in the file system appear to be corrupted. Here's what Microsoft has to say (source):
The specified file has an invalid security ID. Each file on an NTFS or FAT volume has a security ID assigned it. The ID assigned to the data file does not match the ID assigned to security data stream file ($SDS). There is a mismatch in Ids. Chkdsk is replacing the invalid security ID. No user action required.
In any case, the above formatting and other troubleshooting advice is still valid.
The short answer is: the disk appears to be failing. Do not use this drive if you value your data.
Use a utility such as DiskCheckup to determine the SMART status of the drive and verify whether that is true; you'll want to be looking for high (greater than 10-100) counts for reallocated/pending/uncorrectable sectors, and/or tens of thousands of head load/unload count (though there are other indicators too, see the Wikipedia article on SMART status).
As a side note, what disk checking tool are you using? The one in the screenshot doesn't look familiar, perhaps it's invoking chkdsk under the hood?
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