Admin Tips
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      - Miscellaneous
        Running chkdsk on very large volumes

Section(s): Miscellaneous
Published on Jun 13, 2006.
Last Modified on Jun 13, 2006.
Last Modified by MitchTulloch.
Rated 4.5 out of 5 based on 4 votes.

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.

Cheers,
Mitch Tulloch
MVP Windows Server
http://www.mtit.com

About MitchTulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see http://www.mtit.com .