Windows 7 - chkdsk high memory usage / memory leak

poisonsnak · 06-01-2009

Has anyone else noticed that chkdsk uses all available physical memory (if you let it run long enough)?

I find that if I run chkdsk and watch the memory usage in task manager it jumps by about 50MB every 2 seconds or so until it either finishes or hits around 3.2GB at which point my physical memory shows 99% used (I'm running 4GB), and the system of course slows to a crawl.

If you just run a quick chkdsk on your boot drive you may not notice it, but try running something longer like chkdsk /r on a flash drive or chkdsk /f on a bigger internal drive (but not your OS drive as this would require a reboot) and watch the memory usage climb. I have duplicated this on both systems I have running Windows 7. My XP machine (checking the same USB flash drive) uses a much more normal amount of memory for chkdsk (20 - 30 MB).

Anyway, just looking for suggestions, as I have 5 old hard drives that I would like to check. Normally I would run all 5 at once, but with this system it's just not possible as they each use about 700MB of memory and once all the system RAM is used up the disk checking process slows down a lot.

Snufffed · 06-01-2009

chkdsk /r is implys /f if you only doing NTFS format then try /I or /D or /C

/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)

poisonsnak · 06-01-2009

the /I and /C switches speed up stages 1-3 quite a but but don't do anything for stages 4 and 5 (on these old hard drives I want to check them with /B to find bad clusters and re-evaluate any existing ones). I tried running with the switches and the huge memory usage still occurs, it just doesn't get noticeable until stage 4 has been running for a few seconds since it flies through the first 3 so quickly

Also chkdsk makes the following remark when you use /I and /C:

Code:

WARNING!  I parameter specified.
WARNING!  C parameter specified.
Your drive may still be corrupt even after running CHKDSK.

I don't really want this, and to be honest stages 1-3 take so little time anyway I don't think I will use /I or /C. Thanks for the info though.

To be honest I was posting this more as a "found a bug in Windows 7 possibly?" type thread, not a "help me test these hard drives thread". I am testing them one by one on my laptop (running xp with an external enclosure). It's slow going but still a lot faster than it was on my Windows 7 machine.

edit 2: I just checked it on a vista machine I have at work and chkdsk's memory usage is 2,584k on the same usb flash drive. Kind of unusual for windows 7 to use over 1000x as much memory for the same application

TomW · 06-04-2009

I use O&O Defrag and it runs in memory all the time... I have 6 gb of RAM and my RAM usage is at 45% just at a new boot. I've even gone into the registry to change the Prefetch parameters to '2' instead of '3' so 7 doesn't load all my programs into memory on boot up.

Not sure if it's the same, but I do know that my drives are always 0% fragmented. And I know it uses chkdsk on every one of my four hard drives.

Anyone else with high mem utilization while checking hard drives? I mean, I know I'll be adding that extra 6 GB of RAM in a few days so I don't need to worry about it, but just curious anyway, sionce I know MS did a lot of changes to the mem utilization between Vista and Windows 7...

ferjero989 · 06-06-2009

same thing happens to me
im using build 7100 from the microsoft page
when the chkdsk gets to the last step
"Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)..."
the memory goes horrible high and the computer gets slow.. when i saw my memory status gadget.. it says 40 megs free im like O.o
open up task manager chkdsk taking 2 gigs

poisonsnak · 06-06-2009

Yeah. I've done a little troubleshooting since and this is what I've found:

chkdsk /f seems to use 5MB of memory (at peak) for every 1GB of disk space you check (tested on a couple drives - example: a drive with 300GB of data uses 1.5GB of RAM

chkdsk /r seems to use memory equal to the amount of files on the disk. If I put 2.5GB of files on my USB flash drive and use chkdsk /r, it uses 2.5GB of memory by the end of stage 4 (though it stops increasing when you hit stage 5)

Also I tried formatting my USB flash drive to exFAT and FAT32 and the problem does not occur on these two filesystems (seems to be limited to NTFS?)

I'm visiting a friend of mine this weekend that runs vista x64 (my vista install is 32-bit) and I plan to sneak into his system32 directory and borrow his chkdsk / chkntfs / autochk executables and transplant them into my 7 install and see if the situation improves.

poisonsnak · 06-07-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by poisonsnak

I'm visiting a friend of mine this weekend that runs vista x64 (my vista install is 32-bit) and I plan to sneak into his system32 directory and borrow his chkdsk / chkntfs / autochk executables and transplant them into my 7 install and see if the situation improves.

Did this and it didn't work. After the swap, if you run chkdsk you get a "chkdsk has stopped working..." crash type message. Swapped the .exes in from an install of Vista x64 with no service packs. Guess anyone who wants to run chkdsk on windows 7 will have to wait for MS to fix this one (if they even know about it...?)

akash3656 · 06-09-2009

Hey, I face the same damn stupid bug. It really anoying at times to do a disk check and see that your computer seems sluggish. 7 RC 32-bit here on a P4 S478 3.0 Ghz+1 GB RAM

nate42nd · 08-04-2009

I had this happed today. I have an SSD, 8GB RAM so have page file disabled. (running great)

I was running a chkdsk on an EXTERNAL drive and it used ALL 8GB.

Is it okay to run this on external drives? Is there another better way? From CMD propt perhaps.

Snufffed · 08-05-2009

Quote:

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /?
Checks a disk and displays a status report.

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]] [/B]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for fragmentation
.
/F Fixes errors on the disk.
/V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every file
on the disk.
On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
/R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
(implies /F).
/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified number
of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current
size.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
(implies /F).
/I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index entries.
/C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
structure.
/B NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
(implies /R)
The /I or /C switch reduces the amount of time required to run Chkdsk by
skipping certain checks of the volume.
C:\Windows\system32>

The answer is : YES

Windows 7 - chkdsk high memory usage / memory leak

chkdsk high memory usage / memory leak problems?