Once again, we want to copy the file to a different disk, and once again, this is best done within Command Prompt.ĬD “C:\Users\lnote\Documents\Outlook Files\” Some data within the file may be lost, but you’ll have copied as much as possible before taking any additional recovery steps. This preserves a copy in a state where “it can’t get any worse than this”. If the problem is in the file itself, we start by making as best a copy of it as we can. If the copy to NUL fails with a CRC error, then we’ve confirmed the bad sector on your hard disk is actually being used by some portion of the file.
My recommendation would be to copy it to a different disk entirely - perhaps a USB stick, external drive, or something else. If a copy to NUL works without reporting an error, the problem is likely not with the file itself, but with the location you were trying to copy it to. (Replace my example location or file with yours, of course.) Run Command Prompt, and enter the two commands corresponding to the two steps we listed above:ĬD “C:\Users\lnote\Documents\Outlook Files\” If you’re not sure where a PST file is, Where is my Outlook “PST” file located? has instructions to find it. As an example, my file is at “C:\Users\lnote\Documents\Outlook Files\Outlook. This is helpful because we know the only disk access that will happen is to read the file there’s no attempt to write to the disk.įirst, locate the file. NUL is a special device file name that means “nothing”, so this operation copies the file to “nothing”. “CD” to the folder in which the file resides.It’s a two-step process using Command Prompt. We’ll start by making sure the problem is actually with the file being copied, since it’s also possible the problem is with the hard disk location being copied to. We need to verify that, try to recover your file, and repair your hard drive. The fact that you see it when trying to copy a file indicates the bad spot may be within the file itself. A cyclic redundancy check, or “ CRC” error, indicates a bad spot on your hard drive.