chkdsk high memory usage / memory leak

[poisonsnak]

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 win7. 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]

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]

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:

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 win7 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 win7 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]

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 Win7...

 

[ferjero989]

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
open up task manager chkdsk taking 2 gigs

 

[poisonsnak]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[DJG]

I ran CHKDSK with sector repair from the properties window on one of my RAID 0 partitions, once all the way through and once cancelling. It used most of my 12GB memory soon after starting, but nothing bad - I could still surf the browser and such. When it finished and reported no errors, mem usage went back to normal. When I cancelled the second check, mem usage went back to normal after a few seconds.

I see no problem here in my case, just use of available memory, which probably improves performance.

 

[RandomSpank]

I have just found this thread and I have only skimmed it so I am not sure if a solution has been found just yet. I have the same problem. Windows suggested I run a check disk on my 500GB external hard disk. I have 16GB of RAM and it ate all of it up!!! It was crazy, although my system didn't seem to slow down. I foolishly opened control panel in this state an explorer crashed (also the check disk stopped lol). Any fixes for this??

 

[Hopalong X]

There is no solution because there is no problem.

If you run Check Disk close everything else and let it run.
Do not open other programs while it is running.

 

[HammerHead]

Chk Dsk

For me it usually runs as high as 90% of my memory and I have 12Gig

 

[Ex_Brit]

Just discovered this for myself and goodness knows I've run many chkdsk's before and never noticed this (90%-ish of 12gb) usage of my RAM by this utility. Normally I would be running it in Vista and I don't recall it ever using that much there.

Oh well, as long as it is considered normal I wont worry about it. I would never have noticed except my desktop suddenly became sluggish.

 

[LMiller7]

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.

Prefetch does not load applications at bootup. This is a rather widespread myth that has been around since the introduction of prefetch in XP, probably originating with a misinterpretation of some Microsoft article. It is a simple explanation of how prefetch works and appears to make sense. It even appears on a website with a good reputation written by an MCSE. I understand the author later came to a correct understanding and asked that the site remove the article. The request was refused. It even appears in a few books.

Application prefetch entries aren't even examined at bootup. This only takes place when the application is launched and the prefetch file is used to optimize the process. I will not attempt to explain how it does this here. It requires an good understanding of how a modern OS operates and this is not simple.

The default registry value of 3 is optimum for almost all situations.
The value is at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher

Superfetch does preload applications but this is very closely controlled and the memory thus used can be freed at any time if needed for other purposes.

 

[3ogdy]

Unbelievably annoying indeed

I know the age of the original post, but Windows 7 without SP1 on a system with 16GB of RAM takes up all 16GB of RAM while checking a 250GB HDD. Nothing running apart from that and once the RAM is taken up entirely, the process simply hangs (not without responding, but rather just kind of pauses and nothing else happens). What the hell, Microsoft? I'll try and check my drive with HDD Regenerator outside the Windows environment. I'll also update to SP1 and see if the problem persists - I'll update this post anyway.

 

[Ex_Brit]

Just did a chkdsk /f here and CPU usage was 1% and RAM 5.15gb max. I'm up to date, however I don't see the connection between the OS and disk health.
Each drive has different characteristics. Maybe someone else can chip in here.

 

[Poulpos]

Just to confirm a few things : (sorry for topic-necro)


- This is still the case in 2019 with Win7 Pro SP1
- Happens with 2 external USB SATA 3 Tb disks (NTFS)
- OS did neither crash nor became unstable


Did a chkdsk / F /R on both drives simultaneously : error msg on stage 4 because no more memory (all 32gb used)
stopped one of them. The other one stayed at 19Go Memory usage for hours (he was already using 18-19 Gb approx before I kill the other chkdsk job) until job finished successfully (no errors found)


relaunched the other chkdsk seperatly once first one finished : ate up all my 32 Go memoy for hours. Finished successfully (no errors found).


Could still use computer for low memory intensive process. System couldn't free 1Go or more of memory
No games allowed, No VMs, No Big File Compression, etc.


MS confirmed the chkdsk isn't bugged and this is not a memory leak.
So let's confirm it : chkdsk is just poorly designed on Win7.


I made a batch too : echo blabla, increment variable from 1 to 256, relaunches an instance of itself, goes back to start until 256 is reached.

The "relaunches an instance of himself" is the key : it creates an exponential loops. this is just a 10 line ms-dos batch. it consumes all my ressources before hitting 256.
There is also no memory leak here (no malloc in batches), but this is poorly designed and leads to crash.
chkdsk does not leads to a crash. yeah !
But it still is VERY BADLY designed : it does not eat all memory on XP, neither in Win 10. Such a light process shouldn't eat 32 Go RAM. Would I have 64 Go RAM, it would have needed all of it. That's stupid !
But that works, you just don't own your computer for the next 12 hours, it belongs to chkdsk.exe


My 2 cents