Microsoft says Win8 enhances the ability to detect and repair hard drive failures

According to foreign media reports, Microsoft has modified Windows 8 to monitor hard drive operations and detect hard drive failures in order to make the diagnostic and repair process easier, although the capacity of the hard drive continues to expand.

The improvements in Windows 8 are mainly focused on the ChkDsk tool. This tool detects various errors and problems on the hard disk. So far, running ChkDsk has been inconvenient because the end user must stop using the machine while ChkDsk is running, and the scan takes a long time to complete.

Microsoft also modified the NTFS file system for Windows 8. So far, NTFS <;healthy mode" treats its hard drive as a separate part, whether it is good or bad. Therefore, when ChkDsk is running, the hard drive must be completely offline and not available to the user. ChkDsk sometimes runs for hours.

Kiran Bangalore, director of Microsoft's Windows Core Storage and File Systems Program, said in a blog post on Wednesday that the time to disable is directly related to the number of files in the hard drive volume. However, in Windows 8, NFTS scans for hard disk failures in the background and the system remains online. The first attempt to fix a fault on the fly has been completed.

Bangalore said that the downtime for this operation is called "Spotfix" (on-site repair). It only takes a few seconds. In the Windows Server 8 system, we have completely eliminated downtime. With this new mode, the chkdsk offline runtime is now directly related to the number of failures, regardless of the number of files. The old mode is related to the number of files.