Would this work? (Workaround for slow CHKDSK)

I've got a bunch of 6 2TB drives from Windows 7 to CHKDSK. There's probably some minor corruption on them and before relying on any I want to see what errors we get and let NTFS fix them as best it can.

So I need to chkdsk them. I timed chkdsk /f /r of a 2TB drive in windows 7 on a quad core with 8GB for fun - after a week I had to kill it. It's a known problem with Win7 but this time I can't laugh.

Thinking how to work round it, I realised Windows 7 and Windows XP use the same version of NTFS, and on WinXP I used chkdsk all the time on 1TB+ drives, no problem.

The disks are pure data, there's no system files or alternate streams (apart from recycler and sys volume info).

How safe is it to attach these drives to WinXP 32 and chkdsk them, or to copy the standalone chkdsk.exe from Windows XP 64 and run it on Win7 x64 in compatibility mode?

How will you attach them to the XP system? Internally? If so make sure you set the jumpers correctly so they are not seen as the boot drive. Other than that there should not be any problem.

If you have a XP installation CD you could also create a UBCD4WIN bootable CD and use it to run chkdsk against the drives. I've done this many times and it works well. The CD is slow to boot but once booted, you have XP including the Command Prompt where you can run chkdsk from.

Hi,

An alternative (quicker?) way is to copy the data off the 2TB drive, and then do a FULL FORMAT, and then copy the data back again.

FULL FORMAT is the same as a CHKDSK/R

Regards,
Golden

Attaching's no problem - attach to the internal or e-SATA ports. I could also leave them in place and boot the win7 machine off an XP install disk, then drop into XP's recovery console, or boot from a live disk such as BartsPE for WinXP SP3.

Attaching is fine. My concern is whether anyone else has done this or is an expert and knows the answer - whether XP's Chkdsk.exe will do the job. There are no alternate streams, file security, or system files to worry about, and I think XP and Win7 share the same version of NTFS. (Win7 uses more of it but that's not an issue for pure data drives.)

Will it work? Can an XP chkdsk.exe fix a Windows 7 data drive without corrupting files?

I hadn't heard of UBCD4WIN - always good to hear utility ideas.

Golden said:

An alternative (quicker?) way is to copy the data off the 2TB drive, and then do a FULL FORMAT, and then copy the data back again.

Click to expand...

Thanks Golden, but the problem is damaged NTFS not faulty drives. It's pass 4 (verifying files/folders) not pass 5 (checking empty space) that's slow. I could only copy readable files and corrupt files would be unreadable until chkdsk'ed. If I disk-imaged I'd have to use chkdsk to repair the image.

My question is really if XP's chkdsk.exe is safe to use, to fix a win7 disk, and if anyone's done it and can say if it works. There's no alt. streams, no system folders, no annoying NTFS security settings, just a plain ordinary win7 NTFS data partition.