How to find out the bad clusters in a volume.

NTFSD
1

Hi all,

I want to know is there any way to find out all the bad clusters in a
file system. Like when we run chkdsk, it shows the total bad clusters, I
need to know where exactly those bad clusters are in the volume.

By any chance the volume cluster bitmap marks the bitmap as used or
something for the bad clusters.

Thanks

Avi

2

I’ve used Disk Checker (http://www.rssoftlab.com/
http:</http:> ), and for a simple diagnostic, it works fairly
well. It’s the only one that I know of that does it during run-time (not
boot-time).

Let us know if you find any others!

3

----- Original Message -----
From: “Avinash Kumar”
To: “Windows File Systems Devs Interest List”
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 6:42 PM
Subject: [ntfsd] How to find out the bad clusters in a volume.

Hi all,

I want to know is there any way to find out all the bad clusters in a
file system. Like when we run chkdsk, it shows the total bad clusters, I
need to know where exactly those bad clusters are in the volume.

By any chance the volume cluster bitmap marks the bitmap as used or
something for the bad clusters.

Doesn’t NTFS record all the bad clusters as the contents of the ‘bad cluster
file’ - so you can just look at the mapping information for that file to
find out where they are? Of course, other file systems may not do something
similar…

- bill

4

> Doesn’t NTFS record all the bad clusters as the contents of the 'bad cluster

file’ - so you can just look at the mapping information for that file to
find out where they are? Of course, other file systems may not do something
similar…

NTFS - yes. For FAT, read the whole FAT table and find the BAD entries.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com