NT4 Chkdsk/NTFS problem (\$MFT)

[Fred Derf Veteran]

I get the following error on a NT4sp6a server:

The file or folder \$MFT is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.

When I run chkdsk I get:

The type of the file system is NTFS.
This NTFS volume was created or modified by a later version of Windows NT.
This version of chkdsk cannot be run on this volume.
You must boot the version of NT that created/modified this volume and run
chkdsk from that installation.

I had a problem with a broken mirrored set that NT4 didn't seem to want to fix so I ended up moving the drive to a W2K box to break the mirror. This seems to have upgraded the drive to a newer version of NTFS (5.0) than NT4 was designed for.

The server runs but I am unable to do a chkdsk and the tape backup software produces lots of the $MFT errors as described above. I have tried running Norton Utilities 2002 on that system but Norton reports that it isn't designed for servers and promptly quits.

Anybody have any ideas? It does seem to be preventing the tape backup drive from performing properly although other day-to-day tasks are unaffected. I'd rather not reinstall the server since it's a one-box Domain Controller and Exchange Server solution. Yea, I know. It's actually SmallBiz Server 4.5 and it is for a small office.

[Steven]

  fred666 said:

I get the following error on a NT4sp6a server:

The file or folder \$MFT is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.

When I run chkdsk I get:

The type of the file system is NTFS.
This NTFS volume was created or modified by a later version of Windows NT.
This version of chkdsk cannot be run on this volume.
You must boot the version of NT that created/modified this volume and run
chkdsk from that installation.

I had a problem with a broken mirrored set that NT4 didn't seem to want to fix so I ended up moving the drive to a W2K box to break the mirror. This seems to have upgraded the drive to a newer version of NTFS (5.0) than NT4 was designed for.

The server runs but I am unable to do a chkdsk and the tape backup software produces lots of the $MFT errors as described above. I have tried running Norton Utilities 2002 on that system but Norton reports that it isn't designed for servers and promptly quits.

Anybody have any ideas? It does seem to be preventing the tape backup drive from performing properly although other day-to-day tasks are unaffected. I'd rather not reinstall the server since it's a one-box Domain Controller and Exchange Server solution. Yea, I know. It's actually SmallBiz Server 4.5 and it is for a small office.

if you have a Windows 2000 CD-ROM, boot with it and go into the recovery console and then run chkdsk from there.

:)

[Fred Derf Veteran]

I'll give that a try. That should allow me to do a chkdsk and fix any of the day-to-day file system errors but I do not believe it will deal with the \$MFT problem nor do I expect it to allow NT4's chkdsk to work in the future. I believe my NTFS tables were upgraded to NTFS 5.0 (used by Windows 2000 Server) and I don't know if there is a way to downgrade them back to the normal NT4 NTFS.

Still, I hadn't really thought of this particular solution before (using just the Windows 2000 CD instead of moving the hard drive into a Windows 2000 Server box). So I will give it a try. Thank you.

[jimf43]

That will get you through the chkdsk routine, but, I think you may eventually have to reinstall NT4, or, maybe just upgrade to 2000 Server.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

  jimf43 said:

That will get you through the chkdsk routine, but, I think you may eventually have to reinstall NT4, or, maybe just upgrade to 2000 Server.

That is preceisely what I am afraid of.

[extenz]

What is your version of NTFS.SYS? If you are running SP4 or higher, you should not have any issues with a converted volume to NTFS 3.0. (There is a huge misconception out there about the NTFS versioning numbers, but NT 3.51 and 4.0 had NTFS 2.0 and if you check the $volume record in the $MFT, you will see that the version changes. I was scolded by an NTFS developer about using 5.1 to describe the NTFS version in XP (which is 3.1 BTW). Will get flamed for stating this, but if you break out Diskprobe and take a look, you will see this.) Also, what did you use to break the mirror? Diskedit? What is the filesystem type listed as in the partition table? If all else fails, boot the system in Recovery Console with a Win2k disk and run Chkdsk /R from there. What are the results?