Chkdsk utility in Windows 7
WINDOWS DESKTOP MANAGEMENT TIPS
How to run the chkdsk utility in Windows 7
Serdar Yegulalp, Contributor
07.06.2010
Rating: -4.00- (out of 5)
Enterprise IT tips and expert advice
Digg This! StumbleUpon Del.icio.us
The most fragile -- yet critical -- component in any computer is the
hard disk. While hard drives have become much more dependable in the
past 15 years, accidents still happen, and when they do, it's your
data that gets chewed up and spat out like digital bubble gum.
To complement the increased reliability of hard drives, the file
systems used with them have also evolved. In Windows, FAT gave way to
FAT32 and now NTFS (New Technology File System) -- or, rather, NTFS
went from a server-only piece of exotica to the file system used on
the desktop.
But a few things haven't changed, and one of them is the tool used to
keep the file system consistent when things go wrong: chkdsk.
What is chkdsk?
Chkdsk's existence is encapsulated in the pronunciation of its name:
check disk. When you run chkdsk from an administrator-level command
line, it analyzes a particular volume -- hard drive, solid-state
drive, removable disk, etc. -- for problems that might indicate an
easily-fixed inconsistency or hardcore data corruption.
The most common form of the chkdsk command is:
chkdsk /f
Where:
is a drive letter, e.g., C:
The /f switch tells chkdsk to fix errors and not simply produce a
report about the state of the disk, which is what happens if you run
chkdsk with the volume name as the only parameter and no other
switches.
Note that running without the /f parameter can return incomplete
information about the nature of the problems on a disk, as shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1: An instance of chkdsk run without the /f parameter (click to enlarge).
If you run chkdsk without /f, the problems discovered may need to be
fixed before other errors can be repaired. Furthermore, you should
always run chkdsk at least one more time to determine if you need to
repair anything afterwards the initial fix.
Some of the other commonly used switches for chkdsk include the following:
/v -- Runs chkdsk in verbose mode. It explains in great detail which
actions, if any, are being taken as it runs.
/x -- Dismounts the volume to be checked before the check is run. If
you're checking a nonsystem volume, use this option because it
guarantees that the drive will not be accessed by other programs in
the system during the check process. If you don't pass this parameter
and you try to run chkdsk on a volume that's mounted, you'll be asked
if you want to dismount it first. A volume that the system is using,
-- such as the drive with the /Windows directory, can't be dismounted.
Instead, you'll be asked if you want to run the disk check at the next
reboot.
/r -- Attempts to scan for and recover information from bad sectors on
the disk. This option takes a long time to run -- hours on end for
large drives. As a result, it should be used only if you want to
recover information from a damaged disk that's been taken offline from
its host.
/i and /c -- These two options attempt to speed up checking NTFS
volumes by skipping certain indexes and cycles, respectively, within
the folder structure.
For a full list of options, type chkdsk /? in the command line.
Note that chkdsk must always be run with elevated privileges. If you
try to run it as a nonadministrative user, it will print the following
error to the console:
Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to
invoke this utility running in elevated mode.
Chkdsk in action
If chkdsk is needed, it will usually run automatically. For example,
if your system crashes or its power is interrupted, chkdsk may run the
next time the system boots. This happens if one or more of the volumes
in the system has its "dirty bit" set -- a flag on an NTFS volume that
indicates a write was pending for that disk. Chkdsk runs for that
volume to determine if all is well.
Regardless if chkdsk runs automatically or not, you should always run
it on a volume in the following scenarios:
If applications behave strangely or certain files cannot be read after
a blue screen of death (BSOD) or an application crash
If a disk was unmounted from the system without warning (as when a
cable comes unplugged), and it doesn't reliably read when remounted
If a disk appears to have suffered physical damage. Even if it's
readable, it's generally best to inspect it completely if the contents
are critical with the /r option.
The end results of any chkdsk operation are written to the application
log with the event ID 26214, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The results of a chkdsk operation as written to the
application event log (click to enlarge).
Chkdsk from the Recovery Console
Chkdsk can also run from the Recovery Console in Windows XP. The
options in the Recovery Console version of chkdsk are limited to /p,
which is the same as /f, and /r.
More on desktop management
Book chapter How to run the Chkdsk utility in Windows Vista
Tools Cleaning up PCs with Sysinternals
Running chkdsk from the Recovery Console is one way to determine if
the system volume has been damaged, especially if the system was
unexpectedly shut down and you didn't have an opportunity to schedule
a chkdsk operation beforehand.
Note that running chkdsk from the Recovery Console doesn't log the
output to the application log, since the appropriate services aren't
running.
Chkdsk and self-healing NTFS in Windows 7
Some of the best new features in Windows Vista and Windows 7 were
slipped in under the hood when no one was looking. This includes
Self-Healing NTFS, a feature that improves how errors detected by the
file subsystem would be isolated, scrubbed and repaired in the
background.
As a result of this feature, Chkdsk needs to run less often.
A possible downside of self-healing NTFS is that the spot checks can
silently delete data without the user's knowledge. Personally, I think
this would happen only if you're dealing with flaky disk hardware, but
it's possible to not know about flaky disk hardware until after
something bad occurs.
To that end, Microsoft added BugCheckOnCorrupt to NTFS. This feature
does exactly what you think it does: If the system discovers NTFS
corruption, it throws a blue screen of death and shuts everything down
instead of attempting to spot fix it.
This may sound counterintuitive: Why would you want the system to
crash in such a circumstance? But the idea is to stop the system from
doing anything that might corrupt data, including attempting a repair,
which could do more damage.
Although triggering a bug check may be extreme, it allows you to stop
everything and make an image of the disk, or a backup of the most
crucial data, before attempting a repair operation with chkdsk.
To turn on BugCheckOnCorrupt, issue the following command from an
admin privilege command line:
fsutil behavior set BugcheckOnCorrupt 1
Reboot and then issue the following command, again from an
administrative command line, for each drive you want to check:
fsutil repair set 0x10
The command fsutil repair query determines the repair
status for a given drive. To disable BugCheckOnCorrupt for a
particular drive, use fsutil repair set 0x1; to turn it
off completely systemwide, use fsutil behavior set BugCheckOnCorrupt
0.
Remember, you don't have to set BugCheckOnCorrupt unless you have
doubts about the quality of your disk hardware.
Chkdsk and BugCheckOnCorrupt are critical utilities for monitoring
Windows 7 systems. Knowing how to use them can help you when hardware
goes bad.
How to run the chkdsk utility in Windows 7
Serdar Yegulalp, Contributor
07.06.2010
Rating: -4.00- (out of 5)
Enterprise IT tips and expert advice
Digg This! StumbleUpon Del.icio.us
The most fragile -- yet critical -- component in any computer is the
hard disk. While hard drives have become much more dependable in the
past 15 years, accidents still happen, and when they do, it's your
data that gets chewed up and spat out like digital bubble gum.
To complement the increased reliability of hard drives, the file
systems used with them have also evolved. In Windows, FAT gave way to
FAT32 and now NTFS (New Technology File System) -- or, rather, NTFS
went from a server-only piece of exotica to the file system used on
the desktop.
But a few things haven't changed, and one of them is the tool used to
keep the file system consistent when things go wrong: chkdsk.
What is chkdsk?
Chkdsk's existence is encapsulated in the pronunciation of its name:
check disk. When you run chkdsk from an administrator-level command
line, it analyzes a particular volume -- hard drive, solid-state
drive, removable disk, etc. -- for problems that might indicate an
easily-fixed inconsistency or hardcore data corruption.
The most common form of the chkdsk command is:
chkdsk
Where:
The /f switch tells chkdsk to fix errors and not simply produce a
report about the state of the disk, which is what happens if you run
chkdsk with the volume name as the only parameter and no other
switches.
Note that running without the /f parameter can return incomplete
information about the nature of the problems on a disk, as shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1: An instance of chkdsk run without the /f parameter (click to enlarge).
If you run chkdsk without /f, the problems discovered may need to be
fixed before other errors can be repaired. Furthermore, you should
always run chkdsk at least one more time to determine if you need to
repair anything afterwards the initial fix.
Some of the other commonly used switches for chkdsk include the following:
/v -- Runs chkdsk in verbose mode. It explains in great detail which
actions, if any, are being taken as it runs.
/x -- Dismounts the volume to be checked before the check is run. If
you're checking a nonsystem volume, use this option because it
guarantees that the drive will not be accessed by other programs in
the system during the check process. If you don't pass this parameter
and you try to run chkdsk on a volume that's mounted, you'll be asked
if you want to dismount it first. A volume that the system is using,
-- such as the drive with the /Windows directory, can't be dismounted.
Instead, you'll be asked if you want to run the disk check at the next
reboot.
/r -- Attempts to scan for and recover information from bad sectors on
the disk. This option takes a long time to run -- hours on end for
large drives. As a result, it should be used only if you want to
recover information from a damaged disk that's been taken offline from
its host.
/i and /c -- These two options attempt to speed up checking NTFS
volumes by skipping certain indexes and cycles, respectively, within
the folder structure.
For a full list of options, type chkdsk /? in the command line.
Note that chkdsk must always be run with elevated privileges. If you
try to run it as a nonadministrative user, it will print the following
error to the console:
Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to
invoke this utility running in elevated mode.
Chkdsk in action
If chkdsk is needed, it will usually run automatically. For example,
if your system crashes or its power is interrupted, chkdsk may run the
next time the system boots. This happens if one or more of the volumes
in the system has its "dirty bit" set -- a flag on an NTFS volume that
indicates a write was pending for that disk. Chkdsk runs for that
volume to determine if all is well.
Regardless if chkdsk runs automatically or not, you should always run
it on a volume in the following scenarios:
If applications behave strangely or certain files cannot be read after
a blue screen of death (BSOD) or an application crash
If a disk was unmounted from the system without warning (as when a
cable comes unplugged), and it doesn't reliably read when remounted
If a disk appears to have suffered physical damage. Even if it's
readable, it's generally best to inspect it completely if the contents
are critical with the /r option.
The end results of any chkdsk operation are written to the application
log with the event ID 26214, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The results of a chkdsk operation as written to the
application event log (click to enlarge).
Chkdsk from the Recovery Console
Chkdsk can also run from the Recovery Console in Windows XP. The
options in the Recovery Console version of chkdsk are limited to /p,
which is the same as /f, and /r.
More on desktop management
Book chapter How to run the Chkdsk utility in Windows Vista
Tools Cleaning up PCs with Sysinternals
Running chkdsk from the Recovery Console is one way to determine if
the system volume has been damaged, especially if the system was
unexpectedly shut down and you didn't have an opportunity to schedule
a chkdsk operation beforehand.
Note that running chkdsk from the Recovery Console doesn't log the
output to the application log, since the appropriate services aren't
running.
Chkdsk and self-healing NTFS in Windows 7
Some of the best new features in Windows Vista and Windows 7 were
slipped in under the hood when no one was looking. This includes
Self-Healing NTFS, a feature that improves how errors detected by the
file subsystem would be isolated, scrubbed and repaired in the
background.
As a result of this feature, Chkdsk needs to run less often.
A possible downside of self-healing NTFS is that the spot checks can
silently delete data without the user's knowledge. Personally, I think
this would happen only if you're dealing with flaky disk hardware, but
it's possible to not know about flaky disk hardware until after
something bad occurs.
To that end, Microsoft added BugCheckOnCorrupt to NTFS. This feature
does exactly what you think it does: If the system discovers NTFS
corruption, it throws a blue screen of death and shuts everything down
instead of attempting to spot fix it.
This may sound counterintuitive: Why would you want the system to
crash in such a circumstance? But the idea is to stop the system from
doing anything that might corrupt data, including attempting a repair,
which could do more damage.
Although triggering a bug check may be extreme, it allows you to stop
everything and make an image of the disk, or a backup of the most
crucial data, before attempting a repair operation with chkdsk.
To turn on BugCheckOnCorrupt, issue the following command from an
admin privilege command line:
fsutil behavior set BugcheckOnCorrupt 1
Reboot and then issue the following command, again from an
administrative command line, for each drive you want to check:
fsutil repair set
The command fsutil repair query
status for a given drive. To disable BugCheckOnCorrupt for a
particular drive, use fsutil repair set
off completely systemwide, use fsutil behavior set BugCheckOnCorrupt
0.
Remember, you don't have to set BugCheckOnCorrupt unless you have
doubts about the quality of your disk hardware.
Chkdsk and BugCheckOnCorrupt are critical utilities for monitoring
Windows 7 systems. Knowing how to use them can help you when hardware
goes bad.
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