I use Windows XP Home with SP3 on a 4 year old Acer laptop Travelmate 244LM.
chkdsk has many command line option switches, how should I run it :-
a) Under CMD in Windows Normal mode ?
b) Under COMMAND in Windows Normal mode ?
c) In SAFE-Windows or SAFE-DOS mode ?
I want it to report the errors, BUT WITHOUT FIXING THEM.
Do I just run chkdsk with no option switch arguments (other than target drive C:\) ?
Or is there a better tool ?
I wish to observe whether all the disc damage I have seen can be corrected by restoring an Acronis disc image,
so I would like chkdsk to tell me how many errors it finds WITHOUT fixing them,
and then I can restore the Acronis image and the next chkdsk report should give me the answers.
Windows C: -> Properties -> Tools -> Error Checking - Fix File System Errors -> Start
It is unable to proceed without exclusive access, and offers to schedule upon restart.
I accept its offer, restart, and then I find a winlogon event in the event viewer, with details such as the following :-
A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 5 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
19053056 KB total disk space.
7299088 KB in 37677 files.
13876 KB in 4584 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
264960 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
11475132 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
4763264 total allocation units on disk.
2868783 allocation units available on disk.
It is always the same, excepting that :-
Sometimes it omits "Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.";
The "... 5 unused ..." can be any number, normally within the range 3 to 8, once up to 1299, but always the same number for all 3 items within any particular report.
My Questions :-
How bad are these "... unused ..." errors ?
If chkdsk is not run and these errors accumulate, what might be the consequences ?
Please advise me, should I worry that the system glitches that induce "... unused ..." errors might also build up cumulative damage of some sort that is NOT being reported, but could suddenly cause a fatal crash ?
I only once saw the set of 1299 errors. I strongly suspect these were caused when an IPOD Shuffle was plugged into a USB Port, and that instantly put me into panic when my External Hard Drive on a separate port immediately formatted itself. It said permenently busy and inaccessible, even with the IPOD removed, until I shut down. Upon reboot the external drive and its partitions seemed to have survived - perhaps it was not formatting after all !!!
Half an hour after chkdsk fixed 1299 errors the electricity failed in my village.
The laptop and its battery continued running, but lost the mains powered external drive without "safely remove hardware ...", and the event log showed a few "Ftdisk" errors.
I invoked chkdsk "Fix File System Errors" upon restart, and did an orderly shut down.
When the mains was restored I waited a bit longer to be sure, and restarted.
Chkdsk reported a set of "3 unused ..." errors.
All the other error reports in the range 4 to 8 are due to the multiple Ftdisk errors at the instant when Acronis T.I. v11 DIS-mounts an image I was examining. Previous versions gave no such error, and I am now reluctant to mount any image for fear that I may be accumulating irreparable damage on C:\
Under Computer Management -> Device Manager -> Disc Drives -> I have
USB-HS...etc -> Policies -> Optimize for Performance : but Quick Removal makes no difference
IC25N0...etc -> Policies -> Enable Write caching : both optimize are greyed out.
I suspect that if I disable write caching I would cure the problem, but fear that :-
1. This would seriously degrade operation speed; and
2. It might cause instabilities, malfunctions, and BSODs.
Therefore I believe this could be far worse than the problem I wish to fix, so I would prefer to live without ever again mounting an image.
Supplementary questions :-
What is meant by the absence / presence of "Cleaning up minor inconsistencies" ?
Does this refer to irrelevant details that might be sub-normal, but no one is interested in such things ?
Or is it a heading which, when present means, do not worry about the following "unused index ..." errors,
and conversely its absence implies - following "unused index ..." errors were almost fatal ?
What is meant by "0 KB in bad sectors" ?
Does it mean I have a perfect disc, or does it mean any previous bad sectors have been abandoned after the "Scan and Bad Sector recovery" option has designated alternative sectors, in which case is the conclusion of a "Scan & repair bad sectors" the only time I will see a non zero count of what it fixed, and that those bad sectors will not be counted in the future ?
Any advice, answers, and information will be gratefully received.
Regards
Alan
