A chkdsk /r on a Windows XP NTFS system partition revealed bad clusters in a file. chkdsk reported "bad clusters in file xyz have been replaced" (translated).
The filesystem is stored on a plain SATA disk (no RAID).
Quoting http://www.ntfs.com/data-integrity.htm:
If the error occurred during a read, NTFS returns a read error to the calling program, and the data is lost.
Ok, I guess the file is corrupted... really?
Quoting http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187941/en-us
When an unreadable sector is located, NTFS will add the cluster containing that sector to its list of bad clusters and, if the cluster was in use, allocate a new cluster to do the job of the old. If a fault tolerant disk driver is being used, data is recovered and written to the newly allocated cluster. Otherwise, the new cluster is filled with a pattern of 0xFF bytes.
What is meant by "fault tolerant" disk driver? A RAID system?
Is there any means to determine if chkdsk restored the file without data loss or do I have to resort to using a hex editor to search to file for a 4 kB bloc filled with 0xff?
I am pretty sure the file is corrupted and I can easily restore it from backup, but I would like to now if there is a definitive answer.
