Windows Server - Disk failure check

Asked By CM

04-Nov-09 10:20 PM

Are there any facilities on Windows Server 2003 and/or 2008 for checking
for disk failures? I have used chkdsk on a known bad RAID 0 and it did not
report failure. When I use vendor-specific tools, the failure is found.
Are there any other Windows commands or APIs which do more extensive hard
disk checks?

04-Nov-09 10:55 PM

Chkdsk is more geared towards file system corruption issues. The best tools
for disk integrity come from the disk manufacturer.


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Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

05-Nov-09 04:51 AM

You might want to look into SMART, which is a monitoring system for disks.
The idea is that it can give you a warning in advance of likely disk
problems. You can find more here: http://everything.explained.at/S.M.A.R.T/

However Dave is quite right, that in general for any RAID array (assuming
you count RAID 0 as a RAID) then vendor-specific tools are the most reliable
(if not the only) way of identifying disk problems. Chkdsk great as it is,
only reports logical corruptions. That said, you could try chkdsk /r which
will do a more thorough check so that might indicate a problem (takes an age
though) - but modern disks are good at compensating for problems which is
why SMART or the manufacturer's own utilities are useful.
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Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian