2003 server - Sunday, March 2, 2008 2:01 - 0 Comments

Running chkdsk on very large volumes

Using DFS to get around long wait times checking very large volumes.

If you have a storage volume of several hundred gigabytes or more (say a RAID 5 volume or a NAS/SAN attached volume) and discover what may be file corrpution on the volume, you can try running chkdsk to get more info and possibly try and fix. But be warned that running chkdsk on large volumes like this can take many hours to complete, possibly even a day or more for volumes of a terabyte or more.

One way to work around this problem is to use DFS. Create multiple smaller volumes on your storage device and then create a DFS namespace that logically unites these volumes together into what appears to users to be a single large volume. Then if you have file system problems you can run chkdks on these smaller volumes and will likely take an hour or so to verify their condition.

Article written by MyComputerAid.com