Error recovery

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Error recovery

With transaction logging and recovery, the NTFS file system ensures that the volume structure will not be corrupted, so all files remain accessible after a system failure. The NTFS file system also uses the recovery technique called cluster remapping. When the operating system returns a bad-sector error to the NTFS file system, NTFS dynamically replaces the disk cluster containing the bad sector and allocates a new disk cluster for the data. If the error occurs during a read, NTFS returns a read error to the calling program, and the data is lost (unless protected by RAID fault tolerance). When the error occurs during a write, NTFS writes the data to the new disk cluster, and no data is lost. NTFS puts the address of the disk cluster containing the bad sector in its Bad Sector file so that the bad sector is not reused.

Even with transaction logging and recovery and disk cluster remapping, user data can be lost due to hardware failure if you do not use a fault-tolerant-disk solution. For more information, see Planning for Fault-Tolerant Disks.