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Windows 8 Tip of the Day–NTFS changes in Windows 8

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Good Morning Internet, todays tip of the day is on Windows 8 and NTFS changes made:

There is a fundamental change to NTFS in how we handle file system inconsistencies.  Previously, there were a number of reasons that Windows would mark the file system dirty and urge the user to run a Chkdsk /f.  Depending on the size of the data set, this could mean hours or even days of downtime. 

The new approach is to catalog the inconsistencies, verify them, and fix them while the volume is still online when possible.  If it is not possible to repair the file system while online, instead of prompting the user to run a full Chkdsk /f, they will be prompted to run a Chkdsk /spotfix.  This will take the volume offline and fix the cataloged issues, rather than needlessly checking the entire file system.  This reduces the time of running Chkdsk to minutes or even seconds.

While it is still possible to run a traditional Chkdsk /f, it is not likely that it will be needed.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2014
    I have noticed on a number of occasions, if I mount Windows 8 disks/partitions under Windows 7 to carry out e.g. an offline malware scan (sometimes requiring file permissions to be modified to gain access), Windows 8 then finds issues with the file system on the partition when it mounts/accesses it again. Why is this? I have seen a number of similar reports from users dual booting Windows 8 with Win7 or Linux.

    Something else has changed with NTFS in Windows 8 that doesn't appear to have been published in the public domain yet.