Using Windows Home Server’s Command-Line Tools : Working with the Command-Line Tools (part 1) - Working with Disk Management Tools

The real power of the command line shines through when you combine the techniques you’ve learned so far with any of Windows Home Server’s dozens of command-line tools.

1. Working with Disk Management Tools

Windows Home Server comes with a large collection of command-line disk management tools that enable you to check disks or partitions for errors, as well as defragment, format, partition, and convert disks. Table 1 lists the disk management tools that you can use with Windows Home Server.

The next four sections give you more detailed coverage of the CHKDKS and CHKNTFS tools.

CHKDSK: Checking for Hard Disk Errors

CHKDSK [volume [filename]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/B] [/L:[size]]

For example, to run a read-only check—that is, a check that doesn’t repair errors—on drive C:, you enter the following command:

chkdsk c:

Note that when you use the /F switch to fix errors, CHKDSK must lock the volume to prevent running processes from using the volume during the check. If you use the /F switch on drive C:, which is the Windows Home Server system drive, CHKDSK can’t lock the drive, and you see the following message:

Cannot lock current drive.

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

If you press Y and Enter, CHKDSK schedules a check for drive C: to run the next time you reboot Windows Home Server.

CHKNTFS: Scheduling Automatic Disk Checks

You saw in the previous section that CHKDSK prompts you to schedule an automatic disk check during the next reboot if you run CHKDSK /F on the system drive (drive C: in Windows Home Server). If you press Y and Enter at this prompt, CHKDSK adds the AUTOCHK utility to the following Registry setting:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute

This setting specifies the programs that Windows Home Server should run at boot time when the Session Manager is loading. AUTOCHK is the automatic version of CHKDSK that runs at system startup.

Windows Home Server also comes with a command-line tool named CHKNTFS that enables you to cancel pending automatic disk checks, schedule boot-time disk checks without using CHKDSK, and set the time that AUTOCHK counts down before running the automatic disk checks.

Here’s the syntax for CHKNTFS:

CHKNTFS [volume ][/C volume:] [/X volume:] [/D] [/T:[time]]

When you run CHKNTFS with just a volume name, you see one of the following:

• If the volume is not scheduled for a startup disk check, you see the volume’s file system:

  The type of the file system is NTFS.

• If the volume is scheduled for a startup disk check, you see the following message:

  Chkdsk has been scheduled manually to run on next reboot.

• If Windows Home Server’s Storage Manager has detected an error on the volume, it marks the volume as dirty, so in this case, you see the following message (using drive C: as an example):

  C: is dirty. You may use the /C option to schedule chkdsk for this drive.

This last message is confusing because Windows Home Server always performs an automatic startup disk check of any volume that’s marked as dirty. What you can do with CHKNTFS is bypass the automatic startup disk check of any volume that is marked as dirty. To do that, run CHKNTFS with the /X switch, as in this example:

chkntfs /x c:

fsutil dirty set c:

fsutil dirty query c:

If a volume isn’t already marked as dirty, you can force CHKDSK to check a volume at startup by running CHKNTFS with the /C switch. For example, the following command sets up an automatic start check for drive C:

chkntfs /c c:

Note that the /C switch is cumulative, meaning that if you run it multiple times and specify a different volume each time, CHKNTFS adds each new volume to the list of volumes to check at startup. Instead of running multiple commands, however, you can specify multiple volumes in a single command, like so:

chkntfs /c c: t: w:

If you know that a volume has been scheduled for a startup check, but you want to cancel that check, run CHKNTFS with the /X switch, as in this example:

chkntfs /x c:

If you know that multiple volumes are scheduled for automatic startup checks, you can cancel all the checks by running CHKNTFS with the /D switch:

chkntfs /d

If you’ve scheduled a startup check for one or more volumes, or if a volume is marked as dirty, the next time you reboot Windows Home Server, you see a message similar to the following (which uses drive C: as an example):

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is SYS.

One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
To skip disk checking, press any key within 10 second(s).

The number of seconds in the last line counts down to 0. If you press a key before the countdown ends, Windows Home Server skips the disk check; otherwise, it continues with CHKDSK.

You can change the initial countdown value by running CHKNTFS with the /T switch, followed by the number of seconds you want to use for the countdown. For example, the following command sets the countdown to 30 seconds:

chkntfs /t:30

Note that if you run the command CHKNTFS /T (that is, you don’t specify a countdown value), CHKNTFS returns the current countdown value.