CHKDSK: How often?

Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?
Thanks.

"firewire" wrote:

How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?

I do it every Saturday. On the first Saturday of the month, I also run it
with the option to check for and fix bad sectors. Also run it anytime you
get error messages or if you have problems opening, reading, or closing fles
from your hard drive. Some people suggest that you need to do it only once a
month.

I have never tried doing it only monthly rather than weekly, and I have
never had any problems related to hard drive errors. I'm sure there is a
lesson in there somewhere.

I don't know what the harm might be if you don't regularly check for errors.
I do know that if you are running NTFS, it is often self-correcting anyway.
To be more precise, NTFS keeps very precise records of errors, knows to
recopy code from bad sectors to good sectors, and keeps very good track of
bad sectors. This feature is just one of many reasons why it is a far
superior file system to FAT32.

Ken

Ken

In ,
firewire had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the
HD if you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum
schedule? Thanks.

And, just for an opposing view, I never do it... NTFS does most of it for
me. I figure it's smart enough to know when it needs to be checked, if it
isn't then I'll kick it and make it listen better next time. Then again I
only actually turn the PC off when Patch Tueday rolls around or to do
backups outside of the OS. However, I never actually tell it to do it. I
don't suffer from disk problems though that may be because I usually replace
my computers quite often though some of the drives that are kicking about
have been in systems for years and years. So far this method of laziness has
been good and I'd not recommend this for people with FATx formats. When it's
a FAT drive then it's weekly usually.

Galen
--
Signature changed for a moment of silence.
Rest well Alex and we'll see you on the other side.

"firewire" wrote:

Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?
Thanks.

http://www.updatexp.com/windows-xp-chkdsk.html

Marc's newsletter is rather good well worth signing up for.
http://www.updatexp.com/

firewire

If Windows needs to run CHKDSK, it will tell you in no uncertain terms.. I
have to say that I never deliberately run it.. never have need to do it..
call me lucky if you will, but I do not believe in luck..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm





"firewire" wrote in message
...
Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?
Thanks.

Ken
Thanks for the reply and information. How large is your hard drive and how
long does it take to run the check? Thanks.

"Ken Gardner" wrote:

"firewire" wrote:

How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?

I do it every Saturday. On the first Saturday of the month, I also run it
with the option to check for and fix bad sectors. Also run it anytime you
get error messages or if you have problems opening, reading, or closing fles
from your hard drive. Some people suggest that you need to do it only once a
month.

I have never tried doing it only monthly rather than weekly, and I have
never had any problems related to hard drive errors. I'm sure there is a
lesson in there somewhere.

I don't know what the harm might be if you don't regularly check for errors.
I do know that if you are running NTFS, it is often self-correcting anyway.
To be more precise, NTFS keeps very precise records of errors, knows to
recopy code from bad sectors to good sectors, and keeps very good track of
bad sectors. This feature is just one of many reasons why it is a far
superior file system to FAT32.

Ken

Ken

Hi Galen
Thanks for the reply and information. How does it let you know?

"Galen" wrote:

In ,
firewire had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the
HD if you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum
schedule? Thanks.

And, just for an opposing view, I never do it... NTFS does most of it for
me. I figure it's smart enough to know when it needs to be checked, if it
isn't then I'll kick it and make it listen better next time. Then again I
only actually turn the PC off when Patch Tueday rolls around or to do
backups outside of the OS. However, I never actually tell it to do it. I
don't suffer from disk problems though that may be because I usually replace
my computers quite often though some of the drives that are kicking about
have been in systems for years and years. So far this method of laziness has
been good and I'd not recommend this for people with FATx formats. When it's
a FAT drive then it's weekly usually.

Galen
--
Signature changed for a moment of silence.
Rest well Alex and we'll see you on the other side.

Hi
Thanks to all for great information and links!

"Mike Hall (MS-MVP)" wrote:

firewire

If Windows needs to run CHKDSK, it will tell you in no uncertain terms.. I
have to say that I never deliberately run it.. never have need to do it..
call me lucky if you will, but I do not believe in luck..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm





"firewire" wrote in message
...
Hi
How often should one run the subject and is it possible to harm the HD if
you do not perform it often enough? What would be and optimum schedule?
Thanks.

In ,
firewire had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hi Galen
Thanks for the reply and information. How does it let you know?

It does it automatically when it boots up if it has been flagged to do so. I
don't actually use it other than that and haven't had any problems with this
method on NTFS systems yet. I'd definately not try that on FAT but then
again FAT systems seem to run it often enough by default

Galen
--
Signature changed for a moment of silence.
Rest well Alex and we'll see you on the other side.

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:50:37 -0500, "Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)"

If Windows needs to run CHKDSK, it will tell you in no uncertain terms..

Correction: If Windows *thinks* it needs to run ChkDsk ...

I have to say that I never deliberately run it.. never have need to do it..
call me lucky if you will, but I do not believe in luck..

I wouldn't say lucky; just overgeneralizing from a small sample base
:-)

What's going to damage the file system?

1) Interruption of normal writes to disk

This is an eventuality that Windows has kept in mind since Win95 or
so. When a HD volume is being written to, a flag is set within the
file system for that volume, and is cleared when the volume is closed.

When the OS boots, it checks this flag; if the flag is set, it knows
that the previous session interrupted disk writes in progress. So it
does a check of the file system logic to "fix" any errors. Any files
that were being updated are either lost, or left broken.

When Win95 debuted this feature, it ran Scandisk from DOS before any
writes to the HD started, and it asked you what to do when errors were
found. Win98 does the same, but by default it "fixes" them
automatically, and throws away any recovered remnants. WinME ran the
check from Windows, where it often has to restart because the at-risk
volume is already being written to by other processes. XP hopefully
starts the process earlier than WinME, but also automatically fixes
things and (unlike Win9x) this cannot be changed.

What the above illustrates, is a move from respectful treatment of
data that puts the user in control, to a "kill, bury, deny" strategy
that sacrifices user data in the interests of reducing support calls.

2) Physical defects on the HD

This is a budding crisis you need to know about, and urgently so, but:
- CMOS settings default to disabling SMART reporting on POST
- HD's firmware auto-hides bad sectors on the fly
- NTFS's code also auto-hides bad clusters on the fly
- explicit ChkDsk /R also auto-hides bad clusters, buries results

Once again, this looks a lot like "kill, bury, deny" that may delay HD
RMA beyond the warranty period, and hides any early warning the user
might have had before the big meltdown.

HD firmware, NTFS driver code, and ChkDsk /R all "fix" areas of bad
physical disk the same way; they attempt to copy material within these
areas to "good" disk, and then change addressing so that this is used
while the bad areas are hidden from use.

HD firmware does this at a deeper level that won't show up within the
file system's data structures - indeed it has to, given that this is a
system-level fix that runs beneath all OSs.

3) Bad data written to HD; software

Now we come to things that NTFS autorepair philosophy simply assumes
will never happen, starting with soiftware crashes that garbage the
disk's contents. For example, if a bug causes the processor to enter
an arbitrary point within a low-level "write to disk" call, with
arbitrary address values, then any part of the file system structure
contents can be garbaged.

This can be deliberate, as was the case with Witty. NTFS's
much-vaunted security did nothing to prevent Witty from writing over
raw NTFS file system structures, trashing data.

4) Bad data written to HD; hardware

Bad RAM can corrupt not only what is written to HD, but where it is
written as well, having a similar effect as (3). The hardware
involved may be RAM, processor, motherboard chipset or HD logic board,
and flakiness can come from overclocking, bad cables and poor power,
including failing motherboard capacitors.

So my answer would be a bit different.

If you ever have reason to expect anything other than (1), then you
should consider it too dangerous to write to the at-risk HD, and thus
too dangerous to run Windows as that *always* writes to the HD.

http://cquirke.mvps.org/pccrisis.htm refers.

First get your data off, then consider diagnostics or recovery, and
only then consider "fixing" the file system. ChkDsk /F or /R is not a
safe diagnostic, and it is certainly not a data recovery tool!

Finally, a physically sick HD cannot be "fixed" by its firware, NTFS's
fixing-on-the-fly, or ChkDsk /R. They can only make things look
rosier, like rouging up the face of someone bleeding internally so
they don't look so pale and thus don't alarm the neighbors.



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Gone to bloggery: http://cquirke.blogspot.com
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