chkdsk generates undeletable corrupt FILE0000.CHK files on exFAT drive

Question

J:/FOUND.000/FILE0000.CHK is corrupt and not deleteable.

C:\> del J:\FOUND.000\FILE0000.CHK
J:\FOUND.000\FILE0000.CHK
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

Running chkdsk /F J: confirms and "fixes" this.

The type of the file system is exFAT.
Volume Serial Number is 1304-CA02
Windows is verifying files and folders...
Volume label is uSD128.
Corruption was found while examining files in directory \FOUND.000\ (0).
Corruption was found while examining files and directories.
Corruption was found while examining the volume bitmap.
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

 122634880 KB total disk space.
  83100160 KB in 6238 files.
     37440 KB in 577 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
       320 KB in use by the system.
  39496960 KB available on disk.

     65536 bytes in each allocation unit.
   1916170 total allocation units on disk.
    617140 allocation units available on disk.

However, the chkdsk generates another file J:\FOUND.001\FILE0000.CHK. I can now delete the original J:/FOUND.000/FILE0000.CHK but J:\FOUND.001\FILE0000.CHK is not deleteable now, so we're back at square one. Repeating this process just puts you in a loop of generating and deleting files.

Answer 1

I had luck dealing with this by using chkdsk with the parameters /f /freeorphanedchains.  This fixed the drive issue without creating new corrupt/unreadable files.  Note that /freeorphanedchains works on FAT/FAT32/exFAT only: Frees any orphaned cluster chains instead of recovering their contents.