Only FileRead-Mode as new feature?

[ufufufu]

First of all, thanks for the great program. I have been using the free and donated version for many years.

After our cat threw my 8TB data hard drive on the floor this night, I was looking for a tool to check if all files are still readable. In a hurry I found nothing better than to do this with the file comparison of FreeFileSync and select the same drive for source and destination there. Since the comparison is superfluous in this case, I would be nice to have the possibility to simply start a read operation over all files of a drive.

[xCSxXenon]

I would consider any drive that dropped from a table to be trash. I would clone/transfer all the data to a new drive immediately. That will tell you if everything is still readable and get it on a known good disk.

What you described, it something that Gsmartcontrol can do by performing an extended test. It doesn't read files, but it will test every sector for read consistency, which of course will take many hours on your 8TB. I would only barely trust the drive after if passed a full test though

[ufufufu]

Yes, it is a good idea to check the readability of the whole hard disk with Gsmartcontrol, but I also think it is good to check the readability of all files. If a read error occurs, at least I know which file is causing the problem. Since my hard disk is nearly full, almost the entire hard disk is checked anyway.
I formerly used the tool CDCheck for this, but unfortunately it no longer seems to work in Windows 10.

[xCSxXenon]

You need a different tool, FFS is a sync utility, not a data verification one

[Gianni1962]

Try this:

Create the C:\Temp folder and create the file Dummy.txt in it, then execute this command from a Command prompt opened as Administrator:

xcopy X:\ C:\Temp\Dummy.txt /s /r /y

Note: replace X: with the drive letter of the disk you want to check

This command "copies" all files from your X: drive onto the file C:\Temp\Dummy.txt overwriting it with every file it copies.
You don't really want to copy your X: disk to C: ...

During this operation it lists the full path of the files copied.

In case of a read error, it stops asking for user intervention.

At the end you can safely delete the file C:\Temp\Dummy.txt

[ufufufu]

Thank you for your hints... For a smaller amount of files it may be good but writing nearly 7TB in 1,3 Million files may be bad for the ssd. And so a tool which only reads may be the better way.

The way I have used FreeFileSync it does this. However, each file is probably read 2 times and then compared. One read and the comparison would be unnecessary. Therefore, the desired new function would be only a reduced version of the current one.

[Gianni1962]

Anyway there is another way.

Execute this command from a Command prompt opened as Administrator:

chkdsk X: /r

Note: replace X: with the drive letter of the disk you want to check
Note2: this command may take many hours to complete and once started you should not stop it, the risk is disk corruption!

This will read every sector on the disk verifying that is readable.
If trouble arise reading a sector, if this sector is part of a file it tries to relocate it in an unused area of the disk then mark it as bad to avoid future use by another file.
In this process it shows the name of the file in trouble.

[ufufufu]

Thank you, I will try it...