New in Troubleshooting Disks and File Systems

Microsoft Windows XP Professional provides improved troubleshooting tools for disks and file systems. Table 26-1 summarizes the enhancements made from Microsoft Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional.

Table 26-1: Enhancements Since Windows 2000

New Feature	Feature Description
Automated System Recovery (ASR)	Automated System Recovery (ASR) is a two-part recovery system that allows you to restore the operating system state by using files saved to tape media and hard disk configuration information saved to a floppy disk.
Disk Defragmenter has new capabilities, including a command-line option.	Windows XP Professional offers two choices for defragmenting disks: the Disk Defragmenter snap-in and a new command-line version of the tool (Defrag.exe). Both tools can defragment NTFS volumes that have cluster sizes larger than 4 KB and files smaller than 16 clusters. Both tools can also defragment the master file table (MFT) on NTFS volumes.
Troubleshoot disks and volumes at the command line by using DiskPart.	Use the new command-line tool DiskPart to troubleshoot disks and volumes at the command line as an alternative to using the Disk Management snap-in.
Create GUID partition table disks on Itanium-based computers.	Windows XP 64-Bit Edition supports a new partition style called GUID partition table (GPT). GPT disks contain redundant partition tables for improved partition structure integrity.
Use the Fsutil.exe tool to determine whether a volume is marked as dirty.	The Fsutil.exe command-line tool offers many commands that you can use to manage file system behavior. For example, you can use the fsutil dirty command to determine if a volume is dirty. If a volume is dirty, it has experienced file system errors, and you must run Chkdsk on the volume to repair the problem. You can also use the fsutil dirty command to mark a volume as dirty.

If you are migrating from Microsoft Windows NT version 4.0, the enhancements in Table 26-2 apply in addition to those outlined in Table 26-1.

Table 26-2: Enhancements Since Windows NT 4.0

New Feature	Feature Description
Chkntfs.exe	Chkntfs.exe is a command-line tool that you can use to disable the automatic running (at restart) of Chkdsk on dirty volumes. You can also use Chkntfs to cancel a scheduled session of Chkdsk so that it does not run when the computer restarts.
New Chkdsk parameters	Chkdsk offers two new parameters, /c and /i, to reduce the length of time required to run Chkdsk on NTFS volumes.
Recovery Console	Recovery Console is a command-line startup environment that allows you to gain access to the hard disk for basic troubleshooting and system maintenance.
Dmdiag.exe	Dmdiag.exe is a command-line tool that displays the location and layout of dynamic disks and volumes. Dynamic disks were new in Windows 2000 and do not use the traditional partition layout that was used by disks in Windows NT 4.0 and earlier.