Scandisk and cross-linked files

I noticed that in Scandisk there is and option to either COPY or DELETE cross-linked files. Which should it be set to? Seems to me that creating copies is useless since the file could be anything and is renamed to a generic filename and deleting them could cause problems if it is a system file. What is the best way to deal with these files? I've seen 'FILES*' directories created but have no idea what to do with them since I don't know what the files inside were? Scandisk's 'fix' isn't very effective.

 

A crosslinked file is one that shares a cluster with another file. "Generally" one of the files will be correct.

As a result, you don't want to delete these files, because then you may be losing a "good" file that you can't recover.

The best option is to do one of the following:

1. Make copies. This will give all files involved a copy of the shared cluster. Then, check out the files involved. If they are system files, exe/dll/ocx/bin/etc, delete the file and restore it.
If it is a "textual" type file, doc/txt/etc, open the file and see if it is still ok. If not, and you can't restore it, recover what "text" you can from the file and delete it also.

2. Just about the same as above, except don't let Scandisk make copies. Check out the individual files as above.

At the end, you will be most likely deleting one file and restoring it, unless you have system files involved. In which case, just note them, delete them and restore them.

And you are correct, the fix in scandisk really isn't. And if you run with AutoFix, it can do serious damage to your files.

As well, you should edit the file \windows\command\Scandisk.ini and change all the FIXes to PROMPTs. This is the file that scandisk uses after a bad shutdown.