Disk check for NTFS?

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to check for file system corruption on NTFS disks. Some background - we clone hard drives and ship them to customers. We test them on a Mac computer before shipping to avoid the risk of viruses, since the disks are read-only on Mac.

Occasionally we find that even though the hard drives are readable by the Mac, the file system is actually corrupt somehow (when plugged into a Windows computer, the disk is not recognized). So we are looking for a program for Mac that might be able to test the disk.

When I click the Verify button in the Disk Utility, it says "Verify volume failed: invalid request"

I'm looking at a program called DiskWarrior, and have sent an inquiry to that company to ask if it will work.

I have thought of calculating a checksum and comparing it to the original disk. Disk utility has that option (Images | Checksum | CRC32) but it takes too long for us. Perhaps there is another kind of checksum that can be done quicker?

Does anyone have any suggestions? Or some expertise to share? Would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Andrew

Easy way:

Install Windows through Boot Camp on one of your Macs. Use Disk Manager to partition and format the drives as NTFS. Then use "chkdsk /f" from a command prompt to check the drive for errors.

Disk Warrior or special software not needed.

Thanks for your suggestion!

Doesn't this have the same problem as connecting the drive to a Windows computer though? i.e. Windows could write to this disk could it not?

Maybe I am confused?

Windows is not going to write to the disk unless you tell it to. All you're doing is employing Windows so that you can natively check the disk's integrity.

A NTFS formatted drive is native to Windows NT, Win2000, WinXP, Win Vista, and Win 7. NTFS drives are read only by a Mac unless a special driver is installed.

If you're wanting to check the disk integrity of a NTFS drive, the best way is by using a Windows program that can natively do it. The Windows check disk program is similar to the Unix FSCK (file system check).

And if you're looking for a dedicated machine that you can be assured of no virii and the like being transferred to the drive, I'd set up a dedicated machine for nothing but... no internet access, no one using the machine except for this specific task, no flash drives being plugged into it, etc.

Thanks. Yes, the reason I'm doing this is because we've had experience with a virus (a conficker variant) that automatically made copies of itself on any hard drive you attach. So we would indeed be using a pristine testing setup (no internet etc.) but the situation we want to avoid is that one hard drive gets infected somehow (say human error or whatever), then affects all drives connected to the system from that point on.

Anyways, maybe the bootcamp method would be appropriate, will test it out.

FYI, I found out that DiskWarrior doesn't work with NTFS disks.

As I think I mentioned, I tried CRC32 to verify the image, but it took to long. Maybe there is a faster checksum algorithm I could use. Will take a look at that.