Regular maintenance

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Hello,

what is the recommended practice for regular (preventive) drive/partition
maintenance on a typical Win2k/XP desktop or very light duty server system
(NTFS)?

chkdsk doesn't seem to be of much use for partition maintenance. Most of
the time, the errors it shows go away with time.

The purpose is to have a system running without any unnecessary hiccups --
"unnecessary" meaning that they could be prevented by a simple regular
routine check. (I'm not talking about backups -- that's another issue.)

Thanks,
Gerhard

 

[Rod Speed]

what is the recommended practice for regular (preventive)
drive/partition maintenance on a typical Win2k/XP desktop
or very light duty server system (NTFS)?

Dont bother to do anything.

chkdsk doesn't seem to be of much use for partition maintenance.

It does check for basic stuff like systems that rebooted due to a mains failure etc.

Most of the time, the errors it shows go away with time.

Yes, because most dont matter much.

The purpose is to have a system running without any unnecessary
hiccups -- "unnecessary" meaning that they could be prevented by a
simple regular routine check. (I'm not talking about backups --
that's another issue.)

You dont need to do anything. I dont bother to defrag.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hello,

what is the recommended practice for regular (preventive) drive/partition
maintenance on a typical Win2k/XP desktop or very light duty server system
(NTFS)?

chkdsk doesn't seem to be of much use for partition maintenance. Most of
the time, the errors it shows go away with time.

The purpose is to have a system running without any unnecessary hiccups --
"unnecessary" meaning that they could be prevented by a simple regular
routine check. (I'm not talking about backups -- that's another issue.)

For drive maintenance I would recoment a full SMART self test every
14 days or so. It will find problems and correct marginal sectors
before they become bad enough to be unrecoverable. I have been
doing that on a Linux cluster with good results for 3 years now.

You should be able to script this with the smartmontools (google)
for fully automatic execution.

For filesystem maintenance, is there no NTFS specific checker?
Something like ''ntfsck'' (Unix naming convention, probably named
differently on Windows)? There should be one, maybe somebody else
here knows what it is called.

Arno

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

You should be able to script this with the smartmontools (google)
for fully automatic execution.

Thanks, I check that out.

For filesystem maintenance, is there no NTFS specific checker?
Something like ''ntfsck''

chkdsk. But it doesn't seem to be useful for this purpose.

Gerhard

 

[Alan Kakareka]

1.good HDD cooling
2.good power supply
3. mirroring raid
4.regular backups
5. --> no maintenance

--
--
Alan Kakareka
Data Recovery Service
786-253-8286 cell
http://www.247recovery.com
--

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner wrote:

Thanks, I check that out.

chkdsk. But it doesn't seem to be useful for this purpose.

chkdsk is generic for all Windows filesystems. There may be
something specific for NTFS.

Arno

 

[JohnH]

chkdsk is generic for all Windows filesystems. There may be
something specific for NTFS.

Nope, essentially because MS has chosen to do that in chkdsk and
because they have kept the details of NTFS very close to their chests.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

The purpose is to have a system running without any unnecessary hiccups --
"unnecessary" meaning that they could be prevented by a simple regular
routine check.

There's an alternative to chkdsk, you know.

My Computer, right-click drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now.

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

There's an alternative to chkdsk, you know.

My Computer, right-click drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now.

I'm not sure that's actually an alternative to chkdsk; AFAIK this is just
an alternative way to run chkdsk. Besides, it's not really well suited for
regular maintenance, at least not for people (like me) who don't like to do
a lot of unnecessary manual clicking.

Gerhard

 

[Garrot]

There's an alternative to chkdsk, you know.

My Computer, right-click drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now.

That is chkdsk.