Fix Cannot Open Volume For Direct Access Issue With Effective Troubleshooting Hacks

CHKDSK is a system tool of Windows which is used to verify the integrity of a volume and fixes the logical system errors. It can identify the bad sectors present on the hard drive and remove them to make the computer error-free. But according to some users, they are experiencing ‘cannot open volume for direct access’ error while executing this tool. This error also signifies that an application is unable to access the hard drive and perform its operation. This problem is not that big as it seems to be. Hence, you can try out the workarounds focused in this article to eliminate this error.

Solutions to Eliminate the ‘Cannot Open Volume For Direct Access’ Error:

Here are the possible ways by you can try to solve this issue.

Solution 1: Excluding Drive from CHKDSK

A computer recently experiencing a BSOD might damage a drive and try to run the CHKDSK before booting the PC. If the affected drive is C, your PC won’t boot up and cause many issues.

If another drive is corrupted, then you can use this solution to exclude the drive from CHKDSK. It is going to remove the corruption so that CHKDSK can scan the drive manually. Make sure that the drive isn’t damaged physically and then follow the steps given below.

  1. Press Windows key and ‘R’ at the same time to open the Run application.
  2. Type ‘cmd’ in it and press ‘Enter’ to access the Command Prompt window.
  3. Right-click on Command Prompt from the search result, and select the ‘Run as administrator’ option.
  4. If the problem lies with the C drive, then boot the PC into Command Prompt by using the Recovery options. Then go to the next step.
  5. Type ‘chkntfs/X D:’ into the Command Prompt and press ‘Enter’ to execute this command.
  6. In the above command, ‘D’ represents D drive but you can replace it with another drive that is having issues.
  7. After removing the problematic drive successfully, go back to the Command Prompt.
  8. Type ‘chkdsk /f D:’ in it and hit ‘Enter’ to run the CHKDSK forcefully.
  9. You will get a prompt if another application is already using this volume. In that case, press ‘Y’ to execute the command upon restart. Remember that the problem won’t arise if you are using the Command Prompt from the recovery options.

Solution 2: Verify the Third-party Applications

There are high chances of facing the cannot open volume for direct access error if a third-party drive monitoring software is enabled on your PC. It happens because the software accesses the hard drive and prevents CHKDSK from performing its operations. Thus, you need to uninstall this software and fix the error on your PC. To uninstall the software, open the Run application and enter ‘appwiz.cpl’ in it. You will get a list of all applications installed on your PC. Then, locate the software monitoring the hard drive, right-click on it and choose the ‘Uninstall’ option. If there is more than one software monitoring the hard drive and causing the error, then repeat this process to uninstall them as well. After uninstalling the software successfully, restart the system and check whether it has fixed the problem or not.

Solution 3: Inspect the Hard Drive

If none of the above solutions work for you, then the hard drive seems to be physically damaged. Hence, remove the hard drive from your PC and insert it to another PC and check whether it works or not. If the SATA cable is faulty, then replace it with another one. If the USB port is broken, then connect the hard drive to another USB port via the SATA cable. Further, check whether CHKDSK can access the hard drive or not.

These solutions are sufficient enough to fix why CHKDSK cannot open volume for direct access. If the problem continues after applying all these four solutions, then let a technician check the hard drive and assist you further.

Nathaniel Villa
Nathaniel Villa

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