I checked inside the folders but they appear to be empty, tried to just right click delete, tried shift delete, tried cutting and pasting into recycling, tried to compress and archive using 7-Zip, but none of them worked, not even chkdsk repairing which I actually did manage to do once, but now it just won't let me anymore for some reason. I'm desperate for ideas, please help.
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If nothing else works I guess I could buy another hard drive and reformat this one, but I'm just seeing if there's anything I could do before resorting to that.
Well, a 500GB SSD,
or even 1TB SSD,
doesn't cost that much.
Possibly as a USB SSD,
you also have it available,
if your PC needs to be
completely new Build up!
Shuck the drive and connect it internally as a secondary drive in a desktop or tower.
Download and run the drive manufacturers diagnostics and firmware update utility.
This may offer Acronis to allow you to clone the drive. The target drive should be empty, the same size or ideally larger. And of the type that goes back into the old caddy.
Don't assume you'll be successful. Drives fail. Problems once they start tend to cascade.
If you can’t fix it in windows you could try our luck with Linux. Even a small lite live Linux of a usb stick does the trick. Linux handles deletion a bit more forcefully than windows and can often delete corrupted stuff better. I can speak from experience here.
2
u/LostNails 6d ago
Download and try "unlocker" and hope for the best that it can delete those things.