How can I fix damage due to corrupted disk? - Windows still runs and I don't know what has been lost
Tonight when I fired up my windows 7 64x computer, I decided to check for disk integrity so I ran:
computer>>c:>>properties>>tools>>Errorchecking>>Checknow...>>start>>check>>Schedule_Disk_Check>> <reboot>
I found a significant amount of corruption, which I would like to back out.
Of course the disk check fixed the disk corruption, but it was bad enough I am sure I have some orphaned and file parts lost and I don't have any idea what was lost and how serious it was...everything I checked so far seems OK, but I know there was damage as several segments were damaged but what data it effects is like a needle in a hay stack.
So, what I want to do is to get rid of the corruption but restoring from a backup, but I have no idea how long the corruption has been around, and I don't want to lose any of my computer data.
Because there recently have been a number of Windows 7 Updates I have a number of windows restore points.
I have been running nonstop backup, but unfortunately, for whatever reasons, there is only one backup listed on the Explorer and recovery page, but drilling down I can see the various checkpoints created by Windows Update.
How should I proceed to get the computer to the most recent state possible that is most free of corruption personal and system data loss?
If bad sectors are showing up, generally it indicates that more will show up with increasing frequency. If I get bad sectors showing up on a drive that 4-5 years old, I usually bag it. Howvere, sometimes a file can become corrupted and the disk is fine. But if the problem recurs a second time, for the price of a drive, I'd just put in a new one.
Seekforever's advice to keep some backups so that you can restore individual files as the the need arises, it great advice. Additionally, if any program acted strange, I'd probalby do a repair install -- many progs these days allow one to do an in-place repair without a full fresh install. There is even a repair of windows that can be done that doesn't involve losing all your progs and completely reinstalling the OS from scratch.
So I'd make a backup, keep as many on hand as I had room to keep -- older ones will have less current files but are more likely to have noncorrupted files) -- then I'd replace the disk, and restore the most recent backup. and then do file replacements and prog repairs/reinstalls as the need arises.
You could get lucky and have little to do after the restore -- I've had such luck on occasion.
John,
There is no way to determine when the NTFS file system corruption occured, therefore there is no way for you to pick a backup that precedes the corruption.
If it isn't broken, don't fix it.
My advise is run chkdsk -r again and verify that there is no problam any longer.
Also, Windows keeps the file fragments a .CHK files. You could inspect them with these utilities and determine if you see any important files that you could restore from your backups.
http://www.ericphelps.com/uncheck/
I liked my old UNIX days better where there is no such ambiguity. With diff & my backups I could hack and then tell if a single bit was lost in any of my files, anywhere, and just about any time.
It is too bad we are driven to and accept such mediocrity...it makes me a little sick to my stomach...
You probably could do something similar by restoring the backup to different location and then running some Windows comparison program if you want to check all the files. This could spawn a huge amount of output since there will be many legitimate changes. The program should work at a folder level since there is no pipe in Windows at least at the GUI level.
If a suspected file is identified you certainly could do some type of comparison or checksum calculation.