Microsoft details NTFS disk corruption detection and repair in Windows 8

Ron

In a new Building Windows 8 blog post, Microsoft details the new NTFS health model for Windows 8 and a redesigned chkdsk utility that detects and repairs disk corruption. The company has focused on rethinking how the utility works to increase availability and reduce downtime due to chkdsk operations.

“One of our key design goals for Windows 8 was to increase availability and reduce the overall down-time of systems; this feature, along with other storage features such as Storage Spaces and the new ReFS file system, helps reduce the complexity of fixing corruptions and increases the overall availability of the entire system,” Microsoft explained. The new design splits everything into multiple phases (as seen in the screenshot below) and ensures a coordinated, rapid, and transparent resolution to the corrupt disk.

Windows 8 offers better manageability by exposing the state of the file system via the Action Center, Explorer, PowerShell, and Server Manager, all of which display the health state of the drive. There will be four different health states for a disk, which are Online and healthy (no corruptions detected), Online spot verification needed (the spot verification service is verifying the corruption), Online scan needed (corruption is confirmed and a scan is needed), and Spot fix needed (a restart is needed to fix errors).

“In Windows 8, we have made the detection and correction of file system errors more transparent and less intrusive. We believe these changes will be a welcome enhancement for you and we look forward to hearing your feedback,” Microsoft adds. Head over to the source link for a more in-depth look at the new chkdsk utility.