Glossary

File - $BadClus (8)

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Overview

This Metadata file contains a list of all the bad clusters on the volume. The file is sparse, with the only data runs pointing at bad clusters. Naturally the file cannot be read.

Attributes

Type Description Name
0x10 $STANDARD_INFORMATION  
0x30 $FILE_NAME $BadClus
0x80 $DATA [Unnamed]
0x80 $DATA $Bad

Layout

Unnamed Data Stream

This is always zero length.

$Bad Data Stream

It is a file the size of the volume. Any cluster that is OK, is represented by a sparse (zero) cluster. Any bad cluster points to that cluster on disk.

Notes

Other Information

A cluster is bad if it contains at least one bad sector. Because this system file works as any other file, all the bad clusters are marked as used in the $Bitmap system file, so they can never ever be used by any other file.

NTFS support hot-fixing: no more FAT's "Abort, Retry, Fail?". If a new bad cluster is found while the system is running, it is silently added to this file. If the cluster was on a fault tolerant volume, ftdisk (the fault tolerant volume driver) reconstitutes the data and NTFS stores them in another free cluster.

This file deals with Clusters not sectors. The Cluster is the smallest unit of disk space that NTFS will use.


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