You’re shifting your presentation files to your computer from an external drive. However, the transfer process stops suddenly. An alert appears on the screen: “Data error (Cyclic redundancy check).” But what does it stand for, and how can you fix this glitch?
The answer to these queries is quite simple and there’s absolutely no need to worry over this malfunction. In this post, we’ll shed light on what is a ‘cyclical redundancy check’ error, why it happens, and share 7 ways to resolve it without losing your files.
Part 1: Overview of Cyclic Redundancy Check Error
1.1 What Is a Cyclical Redundancy Check？
You must first know the answer to “What is a cyclical redundancy check (CRC)?” A CRC ascertains data accuracy during file transfers or storage. It uses a certain formula to calculate a checksum and then attaches it to data blocks.
When you access or shift data, the checksum is recalculated and compared to original one. If both checksums don’t match, this indicates a ‘cyclic redundancy check’ error. This malfunction often occurs when extracting, copying, or reading files.
1.2 Common Causes of Data Error Cyclic Redundancy Check
Most often, the cyclic redundancy check error is caused by data corruption due to viruses, bad sectors, improper ejection, or power interruptions. However, it might also occur because of other reasons such as the following:
- Improperly connected or damaged hardware (e.g., SATA cables, hard drives, or motherboards).
- Corrupted Windows Registry entries.
- Changes to file names or metadata during use.
- Interrupted software installations.
- Outdated or corrupted hard drive firmware.
Part 3: Recover Data When Encountering ‘Cyclic Redundancy Check’ Error
Before you try a ‘data error cyclic redundancy check’ fix, you should know one thing. Repairing this issue might require you to reformat your drive which would result in losing your files from the drive. Therefore, it would be wise to recover them to a secure place. However, you can’t do that without using specialized data recovery software.
A tool like 4DDiG Data Recovery can help you regain back all data before you employ a ‘cyclic redundancy check’ repair on your error-ridden drive. Here’s more to know about this tool:
- It provides a high recovery rate and a user-friendly interface.
- It can regain data lost from inaccessible and unrecognized drives.
- It can get back files missing due to virus attacks, lost partitions, deletion, formatting, system crashes, and so forth.
- It can reclaim 2000+ types of files from both internal and external devices.
- Offers free inspection of recovered files.
- Free trial available for Windows users.
Here’s how to use this tool to reclaim files from a drive with a CRC error:
Step 1: Execute the disk recovery tool on your computer. Then, pick the error-ridden drive and choose file types to scan. Hit “Scan.”
Step 2: The scan will start at once which you can later pause or stop to examine your desired recovered files.
Step 3: Once you have your desired files, hit “Recover” to export them either to a secure partition on your computer or shift them to One Drive or Google Drive.
Part 4: 7 Ways to Fix Cyclic Redundancy Check Error Easily and Quickly
The following are 7 ‘data error cyclic redundancy check’ fixes. Start from basic inspection and then move to advanced solutions like using Windows-embedded utilities and reformatting the drive.
- 1 Check the Hard Drive Connection
The first step for ‘cyclic redundancy check’ repair is to inspect your drive’s physical connection. It might have a loose or damaged cable, or a broken USB port could prevent your computer from reading drive properly. Thus, examine the cable for damage and check USB ports on your PC for damage.
If you’re using an external hard drive connect it directly to USB port on motherboard. Then, if it doesn’t solve the problem, connect the drive to another PC or change the cable and plug it into same port on your computer. If issue persists, attach your drive with the replaced cable to another computer.
4.2 Restart Your Computer
The second trick is to reboot your computer for a fresh start. It can remove temporary glitches in the system, and free up memory used by background processes and web browsers. Simply, power off your computer. Then, unplug the cable. Plug it back again and switch on the computer for a cyclic redundancy check repair.
4.3 Don’t Copy or Transfer Huge Files
It might be that the files you’re shifting are very large (10GB or larger) which could be the reason for a cyclic redundancy check error. Not all systems have the configuration to support such file transfer So, one ‘data error cyclic redundancy check’ fix is to shift files in small batches instead of moving all of them at once.
4.4 Run Chkdsk Utility
Bad sectors and file system errors can also cause a cyclic redundancy check malfunction. Here you can use a Windows-embedded utility such as CHKDSK which is designed specifically to locate and fix system errors. To use it follow instructions below:
Step 1: Input “cmd” in Windows search box. Then, pick and execute “Command Prompt.”
Step 2: Type following command. Hit “Enter” afterward:
- [drive letter]: /f /r /x.
4.5 Run a SFC Scan
A cyclic redundancy check error could also show up because of system file corruption. In such a case, you can execute an SFC scan, another Windows-embedded utility to replace corrupted files with a cached copy. Here’s how to run it:
Step 1: Type following command. Hit “Enter” afterward:
- DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
Step 2: After the operation completes, input the command beneath. Hit “Enter” aftward:
- sfc /scannow
Step 3: Input “exit” after corrupted files are replaced.
4.6 Reformat the Problematic Drive
If an SFC scan doesn’t work, the next step would be to reformat your error-ridden drive. However, make sure to use a specialized data recovery tool first, before you go on fixing it. Reformatting your drive will re-initialize it and provide it with a new file system that can fix ‘data error cyclic redundancy check’. Here’s how to reformat your error-ridden disk:
Step 1: Open “File Explorer.” Then, right-click the problematic drive. Hit “Format.”
Step 2: Select a file system (NTFS for hard drives)and (FAT32 for SD cards or USBs (32GB or smaller)).
Step 3: Tick mark “Quick Format.” Hit “Start.”
4.7 Send It For Repair
In a situation where you’re unable to troubleshoot the CRC error, have a look at its vitals. So, you’ll know better whether it is failing or not, and this info will also help the professionals to repair the error-ridden disk quickly. You can use a diagnostic tool to check your drive’s vitals.
For instance, Seagate and Western Digital manufacturers provide disk health diagnostic apps to generate a S.M.A.R.T. disk health report. But if your disk vendor doesn’t provide one such app, you can use CrystalDiskInfo.
In an S.M.A.R.T. report, watch out for values in fields e.g. Current Pending Sector Count, Reported Uncorrectable Errors, and Reallocated Sector Count. If these values are high this indicates either a worn-out drive or bad sectors. If the disk is beyond repair, check its warranty for a replacement option.