Power outage during disk wipe. What do I do now?
- by Mark Trexler
I was using Roadkil Diskwipe on an external hard drive and the power went out. I had removed it from any outlet connection by the time power was restored to prevent power-spike damage (it's on a surge protector, but I didn't want to rely on that). My question is, where do I go from here? Obviously I don't care about preserving any data currently on it, I just want to make sure the drive itself is not terminally damaged. I'm running chkdsk (full), but I don't know if that's the correct step to assessing any damage. If it makes any difference, the hard drive was unallocated at the time of the outage, as Diskwipe requires that for it to run. Also, could something like this cause latent problems with the drive itself (i.e. serious issues that I won't be aware of when testing it now). I'd appreciate any program recommendations if chkdsk is not the most appropriate diagnostic route. Thank you.
