Just read in the disk using WinImage. If there are bad blocks, it will tell you.

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

Windows 10 PC

..

Windows 10 had issues with (real) floppy drives from the very beginning.
It's a wonder it (sort of) works at all. Not kidding. 😐

I've had no trouble using USB floppy drives on Windows 10 whatsoever, including running chkdsk. There's just a few things you need to keep in mind.

You need to be running Command Prompt as administrator (Start, tyoe "cmd", then RIGHT-CLICK on it and do "Run as administrator"). This should allow you to do "chkdsk a: /r". It should ask you if you want to force dismount the volume. Select "Yes" and it should do the scan.

Thanks for the ideas to try but I found out that you cant run chkdsk /r in the root of A: as it says:

The type of the file system is FAT.
Cannot lock current drive.

but if you are anywhere else eg. C:\users\Name and run chkdsk A: /R it works fine, its strange for Windows 10 to be like this

Ah, yeah that is true, and it slipped my mind entirely because I had gotten used to not switching to a: in the command prompt before running chkdsk for this very reason. This has actually been the case since at least Vista, possibly even XP. This limitation applies for all drives, not just removable drives (and of course system drives also require a reboot to do the scan).

Or chkdsk /x and it will ask if you want to force a dismount, if you just GOTTA be at the A:\ prompt fo start chkdsk.

I tried chkdsk /x AlaricD and it only says:

The type of the file system is FAT.
Cannot lock current drive.

I even tried with run as administrator.

are You using any AV software or similar stuff?

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

I tried chkdsk /x AlaricD and it only says: […]
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I tried chkdsk /x AlaricD and it only says:

The type of the file system is FAT.
Cannot lock current drive.

I even tried with run as administrator.

Odd, it usually would ask if you want to force a dismount and then continue. Maybe a floppy is an exception to that, due to filesystem or something. Does it not also say anything like:
"Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)" (Although it may not if it determines that the drive won't be available that early in the boot sequence)

I'll have to break out my external floppy drive and mess with it.

It makes total sense to me why it won't let you dismount a drive that you are currently trying to run something from even though chkdsk isn't really on A:.

If you dismount it, it kills the handle to it and if it let it do that then the command prompt would probably freak out and either close or just not run chkdsk anyway.

In the command prompt, after something finishes, it is going to try to return to the same path you were in before you ran the program. If the drive that you were in gets dismounted, it is not going to be able to return to it.

Just don't run it from the A: prompt and it will work fine every time.

Now I feel like I want to run something while at the A: prompt, then unplug the USB cable to the drive and see what happens when it finishes.