CHKDSK deleted everything on Win2K3

Last night, I found out my HD partition (160GB) on one of my ESX(VMWARE) servers is showing file system error so I decided to run a chkdsk /f to fix the error. Regrettably once the process completed (deleted orphan files blah blah), all my files are gone & there is no way for me to recover except from the latest backup.

I have read some articles online and it seems to be a known issue with chkdsk to run on HD over 120GB.... Can someone please shed some lights if this is indeed the case? Would chkdsk /r with less intrusive scanning should be use instead for HD over 100GB

Most importantly, any solution ?


Thanks in advance !!

 

Thanks Steve & am glad to be onboard

With regards to the above, here is one of them.. FYI, there is no conclusive/concrete evidence yet showing partition over 120GB will be having issues when the /F parameter is used but most of the comments/post that I have read so far pointing me to the direction whereby partition over 120GB will post greater risk when chkdsk /F is used.

link:http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp/37173-recover-files-chkdsk-deleted.html

 

My bad, my question are we suppose to use chkdsk /F on large partition (above 120GB) if file system errors detected on the drive itself? if not, is chkdsk /R a safer bet instead? Best practice etc..


Thanks again

 

Right, i agreed with you but unfortunately the backup failed due to the mentioned errors... Luckly enough to restored back 90% of the data loss from the latest backup.

 

Personally, I wouldn't EVER run chkdsk (with slash anything) unless as a LAST RESORT, its always been known to be fairly painful to run on any drive in terms of not intelligently trying to recover things without doing even more damage.

I hope you have backups.

 

Often when chkdsk does "delete" files folders, it puts them in a hidden folder in the root of the drive under Folder.000 Folder.001 etc. I had an issue with a server that blue screened and performed a chkdsk at reboot (during the early hours of the morning). The client complained that the server would not boot. I was able to boot into one of our tools that allowed me to access the hard drive. The entire C:\Windows folder was in Folder.000. Using the command line utilities I moved the folder back, restarted the server and everything was back to normal. I am not sure if this is always the case, but the client was very happy. I have used chkdsk plenty of times with little or no issues, but I have heard people cringe at the thought.

 

Chkdsk will indeed recover 'data' to these hidden folders, but much of the time it is only recovering what it can see, the fact that corruption occurred in the first place would be justification for me not to reuse anything that it manages to scrape from the HD, particularly when they are core 'boot' files.

Avoid Chkdsk unless its a last ditch effort to get something off the disk, and even then professional recovery should be used if the data is critical.