"Insufficient Disk Space to fix master file table (MFT)

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barrywohl · #1 Post by **barrywohl** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:57 am

I'm running Vista x64 on a T61p with 4 gb of ram and a Hitachi 7K200 200 gb drive. The drive has been partitioned by Acronis softeware into to a 60 gb C: drive and a 140 gb E: drive. I keep data on the E: drive. Right now the C: drive has 13.8 gb free and the E: drive has 62 gb free.

Recently I've got some error message that the E: drive was corrupted and I needed to run CHKDSK. I ran CHKDSK both at reboot and from within VISTA. Now I can use the E: drive again but at each reboot CHKDSK runs on the E: drive until stage 5 and then gives me the message: "Insufficient Disk Space to fix master file table (MFT)."

I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 pre SP1. I did a clean install on a brand new 7K200 drive in November and I've had no other problems since then.

Any solutions or directions to other threads with help would be great!.

Brad · #2 Post by **Brad** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:32 am

I would try the Hitachi Drive Fitness test and see if the drive is having some trouble.

Almost sounds like a hardware problem.

Brad

#3 Post by **Kyocera** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:32 am

Error Message:

Insufficient disk space to repair master file table (MFT) mirror. CHKDSK aborted.

Explanation:

The master file table mirror must not be damaged for the file system to function properly.

User Action:

Delete some unneeded files from the NTFS volume, if you can, and then retry the Chkdsk command. If you cannot delete any files, you will have to reformat the NTFS volume and restore data from backup.

Definately run the Fitness Test. You may have some corrupt sectors. Might want to save any data on that drive.

barrywohl · #4 Post by **barrywohl** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 12:55 pm

Brad wrote:I would try the Hitachi Drive Fitness test and see if the drive is having some trouble.

Almost sounds like a hardware problem.

Brad

Great suggestion but no solution. Thanks. I downloaded Hitachi Drive Fitness 4.12-b1. I ran the advanced test and it finished with no errors. At least one problem ruled out.

I found something on Microsoft Technet suggesting it was a problem with Acronis Disk Director suite. I've emailed Acronis.

Can I use Vista "Copy" to copy the whole E: drive to another drive, then reformat the E: drive and then "Copy" it all back. I've got some desktops for some users on the E: drive as well as lots of document and data files. Will "copy" find hidden and system files?

I will use Acronis TrueImage as well as "Copy" to back up that drive before I fix it. At least it is software, not hardware.

Barrry

Brad · #5 Post by **Brad** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:12 pm

No hard drive trouble thats a start.

I haven't used the Vista copy enough to have an opinion but if its anything like other Windows versions I wouldn't trust it. My suggestion is a backup program like Acronis. Also if the data is very important make more than one copy.

Brad

msb0b · #6 Post by **msb0b** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:30 pm

Looks like the problem is narrowed down to file system corruption. Probably from Acronis creating a slightly incompatible file system on the partition. I agree that copying the files off to a separate disk and then reformat the partition is the best course of action.

With that in mind, I would not use a block level partition back up utility like Acronis, Ghost or Complete PC Backup. You will copy the corrupted file system.

Explorer's copy will work, but with one caveat. It does not copy the permissions on files and directories unless you enable an option in the registry. If there are profiles on E:, you need to make sure the permissions get copied properly or the affected profiles will not load.

Another option is a backup program like through Vista's Backup Files Wizard, Retrospect or Backup Exec. These programs will store the file contents and permissions but not the corrupted file system structure.

Good luck.

barrywohl · #7 Post by **barrywohl** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:03 am

msb0b wrote: Another option is a backup program like through Vista's Backup Files Wizard, Retrospect or Backup Exec. These programs will store the file contents and permissions but not the corrupted file system structure.

Thanks for this advice. I'll use the Vista Backup Files Wizard.

After I do that, to fix the broken Master File Table, do I need to reformat the E: partition or do I have to remove the partition and use Vista's partitioning tool to restore it?

Why can't chkdsk do its job? Obviously I have plenty of RAM and hard disk space to get it done?

msb0b · #8 Post by **msb0b** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:06 pm

Format should be sufficient. It will zero out the file system data structure so you can put files on it.

There is only so much chkdsk can do with bad data.

#9 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:21 pm

After I do that, to fix the broken Master File Table, do I need to reformat the E: partition or do I have to remove the partition and use Vista's partitioning tool to restore it?

msb0b, so there is one MFT per ntfs volume on the disk?

Been trying to find that googling and reading but couldn't get a definate yes.

msb0b · #10 Post by **msb0b** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 6:15 pm

I am not privy to the closed NTFS specification, so my guess is as good as yours.

From the materials that I have read, there is a copy of the first four sectors of the MFT stored elsewhere in the partition, but the whole MFT is not duplicated.

I do know that Linux's NTFS support is mostly based on HPFS specs and reverse engineering of the new features that MS added. Reverse engineering may not be able to produce the same outputs. To an extent this applies to Acronis, which runs on Linux.

barrywohl · #11 Post by **barrywohl** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 7:04 am

I still have the problem with the master file table error on check disk, but my corrupted file system error on my e: drive seems to have resolved after running chkdsk several times in various scenarios.

I now suspect the two problems might be independent. I could have had the MFT / Chkdsk error since I formatted and partitioned the disk in November and just not noticed it until I needed chkdsk to fix the corrupted disk.

I don't seem to have lost any error.

Acronis still hasn't asnwered my customer service email from two days ago.

I sure will be sure I back up everything before my Vista x64 SP1 upgrade.

#12 Post by **carbon_unit** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:29 am

Maybe you should backup the data on the E:\ partition, then using Disk Management, delete the E:\partition and recreate it, then format it. Then it should be correct.

Brad · #13 Post by **Brad** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:06 am

Recreation is a great idea.

Another thought depending on how important everything is get a second drive and create a complete image and attempt to solve the problem on the newly created drive. This way you would have a 100% working original. Also for future full drive backups you would have the necessary hardware.

Brad

barrywohl · #14 Post by **barrywohl** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:37 am

I'm able to "fix" the problem temporarilly by running chkdsk from a "cmd" prompt with administrator privileges but the problems recur.

I think I'm going to get a new hard drive and rebuild it from scratch, but this time use Vista x64 to control the partitioning rather than Acronis, and then, when the new drive is working well, reformat the current drivd and use it as backup.

It passed the Hitachi hardware test but something weird is happening, and rebuilding from scratch is my best hope for getting rid of it.

It all began after I loaded Nikon's NEF (raw) Codec for Vista 32 bit. I suspect that the Nikon codec caused the problem. Also, about the same time, I removed an optical drive during boot up.

Anyway, I've got a new drive coming in a couple of days and some time set aside Friday and Saturday for rebuilding from scratch.

I even have an extra copy of Vista Ultimate 32/64 bit in the box seal unbroken.

barrywohl · #15 Post by **barrywohl** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:46 pm

For the last several days, I could recover my e: partition whenever it became unreadable by running "chkdsk e: /x /f/ v" from within a dos or "CMD" session with administrator privileges. I kept hoping it was fixed.

Today I upgraded to Vista x64 sp1. After that the e: drive was "unaccessable" and chkdsk would fail with a "RAW filesystem" error.

I bit the bullet and reformated the e: partition. That erased the data but the e: partition was STILL unreadable. Then I deleted the partition and reestablished the partition with Vista Administrative tools and reformatted. I restored the information from an Acronis TrueImage backup. I restored the data but not the partition information.

For now all seems good, back to normal. I was hoping SP1 would have an enhanced chkdsk but instead it had a pickier chkdsk.

Hopefully my e: partition will stay healed.

"Insufficient Disk Space to fix master file table (MFT)

"Insufficient Disk Space to fix master file table (MFT)

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