So I tried to defrag a slow booting win7 computer yesterday using the old but reliable My Defrag program. I was not at the computer to see it's progress, but apparently it was still running some unusual length of time later, and I don't know if the process was interrupted or the computer was used for something else while it was running.
Today, the windows logo takes an absolute age then blue-screens, unfortunately I didn't take note of the error - possible corrupt system volume?
Anyway it reboots and off into startup repair it takes me.. after again an exceedingly long load time (about an hour just to bring up the system repair menu). I don't run startup repair yet, since the time it's taking has me worried about mechanical failure, so I go to command prompt to see if I can access any files to recover them.. and the hard drive speed is suddenly fine for everything apart from the (system) partition that was defragged, so I'm guessing mechanical is actually fine.
But anything to do with this affected partition takes an age - and rather than a constant access noise I just get short reads and long pauses.
Currently running a chkdsk /R, but I'm guessing the defrag tried to defrag the MFT and failed, though I don't know if chkdsk can run with a broken MFT? The file records all verified OK so maybe it's not MFT?
Any recommendations to recover it?