Chkdsk index check presently 8807 percent complete and climbing

[Guest Nick Payne]

A SAN cluster volume on one of our servers has started filling the server

system log with errors from NTFS saying "the file system structure on the

disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume

Forensics". Other volumes on the server are fine. I moved the disk to a

separate cluster group and put it into maintenance mode to run chkdsk.

However...

 

1. based on previous experience with volumes of this size (800Gb, about 1.5

million files), I would have estimated six to eight hours for chkdsk to

complete. After five hours, chkdsk is still checking index entries and is

now indicating that index checking is 8963 percent complete, so I doubt that

it is ever going to complete.

 

2. the NTFS errors are still appearing in the system log, and as chkdsk is

the only thing that has access to the volume at the moment, it seems that

trying to repair the volume is what is creating the errors.

 

Any suggestions on what to try next other than a reformat and restore from

backup tape? The server is running Win2003 SP2 x64. I have already moved the

cluster group with the volume between physical nodes to see if the problem

was related to the hardware on one node, but it is not, as the problem

persists on the other cluster node.

 

Nick Payne