Windows 2000 Chkdsk Improvements

Windows 2000 Chkdsk Improvements

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  File verification (stage 1) and security verification (stage 3) are each as much as three times faster than in Windows NT. Additionally, both stage 1 and 3 are now dual-threaded to maximize throughput.
  
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  Index verification (stage 2) was the most time-consuming and complex stage in earlier versions of Windows NT. This has been improved in Windows 2000 from no change (in special cases) to at least nine times faster. The volumes that take the longest time in Windows NT 4.0 Chkdsk will most likely hit the high end of the improvement.
  
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  The progress indicator for the index verification stage has been improved so that it is now more closely proportional to the number of index entries that are checked. It will not be as likely to give the user the impression that Chkdsk is “hung” (has stopped responding) when the progress indicator remains at a certain percent for a long time when Chkdsk checks a folder that contains the majority of the files in the volume.
  
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  Improvements have also been made in processing fragmented or compressed files. In testing, Chkdsk was run on a single 0.5 gigabyte (GB) fragmented file, and it finished running in 30 seconds (as compared to 450 seconds on Windows NT). Note that this is a 15-fold increase in speed.
  
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  Microsoft added two command-line switches (the /i option and the /c option) to Chkdsk to allow for brief index verification and to skip cycle checking. When used together on a huge volume, you can save a lot of time. This is particularly useful if you do not care about the complete correction of directories.
  
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  Improvements have also been made in processing files with huge amounts of data streams or huge attribute lists (which typically results because of huge file size or fragmented or compressed files). In testing, Chkdsk was run on a single file with 5600 data streams, and it took 208 seconds (as compared to 14,164 seconds on Windows NT). This is a 68-fold increase in speed.