Running chkdsk on a disk partition without a drive letter

Solution 1:

Try this.

Open a command prompt. Execute the mountvol command which will tell you all the volumes on your system and give you the GUID of them.

\\?\Volume{eb38d03b-29ed-11e2-be65-806e6f6e6963}\
    *** NO MOUNT POINTS ***

\\?\Volume{eb38d03c-29ed-11e2-be65-806e6f6e6963}\
    C:\

\\?\Volume{41ae7a1c-9849-11e2-be7a-0026b9dc157c}\
    F:\

I bet the one you won't have a drive letter but Windows should still give it a GUID if it's a valid and recognized partition.

Then run CHKDSK in this fashion:

chkdsk "\\?\Volume{eb38d03c-29ed-11e2-be65-806e6f6e6963}"

Worked on my system but my volume had a drive letter. Use /f and other switches as appropriate.

Solution 2:

LawrenceC's answer worked for me. If you have many volumes without drive letters (e.g. Recovery, etc) and don't know which GUID to use, though, here's a way that might be easier:

1. Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).
2. Right-click on the volume you want to scan.
3. Select Properties.
4. Go to the "Security" tab.
5. Copy the "Object name" string displayed at the top of the tab.
6. Open a UAC-elevated command prompt.
7. Type CHKDSK (along with the desired switches you want to pass, like /R or /X).
8. Paste-in the string you copied in step 5.
9. Remove the trailing slash.
10. Press ENTER.