I wasusing the Windows XP disk defragmenter on a NTFS-formatted volume and during defragmentation of my external hard drive, the power went off in my house suddenly (I tripped a circuit breaker). When I got the power back on, the drive seems okay but I scanned the drive using Chkdsk in Windows. I checked "Automatically fix errors" and all it said after it was done was "Disk Check Complete". My assumption is that the file system is healthy, butcould the power lossduring the defragmentation affect the files on the disk?1 person got this answerI do too

I wasusing the Windows XP disk defragmenter on a NTFS-formatted volume and during defragmentation of my external hard drive, the power went off in my house suddenly (I tripped a circuit breaker). When I got the power back on, the drive seems okay but I scanned the drive using Chkdsk in Windows. I checked "Automatically fix errors" and all it said after it was done was "Disk Check Complete". My assumption is that the file system is healthy, butcould the power lossduring the defragmentation affect the files on the disk? =====================================I would suspect that your drive is safe but you can view the Error-checking (chkdsk) log at the following location:In Windows XP to find the Error-checking log file...go to...Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Event Viewer /Application / [Source] Wininit or WinlogonJohn Inzer - MS-MVP - Digital Media Experience

it would likely only cause a problem for one single file.that would be the one being written [moved] at the instant the power cut.You may have a problem, but with some file so obscure that you never encounter it.more than likely, because of the use of cache or swap files, you won't have any trouble at all