NTFS instability???

I work a small repair shop and have noticed many customers bring in PCs with inexplicable damage to the filesystem.
We plug the drives into our Fedora servers and they present input/output errors or nonexistent folders filled with inaccessible files.

The OS usually responds in catastrophic ways to the metadata damage we find
>System32 driver folder corruption
>Crashes in everything but safemode where the problem driver doesn't launch

>Winapps damage
>Freezing upon starting default windows applications

>WinSxS
>Random but eventual halt of the machine's operation in under 10 seconds after something stalls

1. All I know is that the folders/ files themselves cannot be overwritten. No matter what is tried the entire volume is FUCKED once we spot it and we have to prompt for a reinstallation.
2. It affects files but is only visible to us when metadata like folders are damaged. And it obviously has greater effect when an entire directory structure becomes partially or fully unusable.
3. Once we spot it in simple stuff it seems to be a death sentence. No matter how we try to combat it the customer will come back in a few months with new issues; same cause. The filesystem just continues to just... melt.

Is NTFS fundamentally broken or is something else at work here?
What the fuck is killing all of these machines for the exact same reason?

run SMART checks on the drive

That's the thing though.
Every single drive checks out in perfect 10/10 health.

Zero bads and no reallocations.
i ran a surface scan to try and pick out a baddie or two in smartctl but it came back clean on all of the obvious cases.

This is legit got me a little worried.

yeah NTFS is shit
use EXT4

BTRFS guy myself but I work with this shit and it's making everything a hellscape.
Endless PCs that lesser men would pave over and call it a day without a second thought as to why they fail. But I'm trying to identify why, it's hard when the only tool you have to repair volumes is a proprietary CHKDSK with two option flags and barely a verbose output about what it's really doing.

Anecdotally NTFS is an unmaintainable mess because its accumulated so many hacks and patches over the years, and theres nobody left at Microsoft smart enough to run a filesystem. Microsoft presumably doesn't improve things because its not losing them sales, and cleanups/bugfixes/refactoring don't sell shit, only new features sell shit, and only in sexy areas, not filesystems.

>microsoft

well, there's your problem right there ...

Perhaps use a non-retarded software ..?

Possibly a windows update failure or failed rollback.

Did you try ntfsfix from ntfs-3g?

>I plug in hard drives with a proprietary filesystem into my open sores pile of shit that probably hasnt been updated in 15 years and it gives me strange errors
Maybe you should stop plugging them into defunct systems that arent meant to read those filesystems, you fat fucking retard?

>Is NTFS fundamentally broken
Yup, there's your answer.

NTFSFIX can only uncheck the dirty bit.
It's laughably lacking.

I know exactly why. Nobody is willing to hack this shit together so it only runs with the most basic of functions.

I mean shit man, people run production servers, and host their cherished memories on this junk and I get to tell them daily that some of them got roached. It's pretty depressing.

>Windows
Found your problem.

Could it possibly be encryption malware that fucked the volume up partially?

Normies storing their important data on computers was a mistake. If they didn't lose it to wandows failure, it would have been something else.

Well, technically it's other people's problems but they pay me to fix them, temporarily making it my problem.
I would like to make this less of a problem and Microsoft seems to have cocks up their ears when it comes to any filesystem bugs and complaints. They have never ever patched this shit filesystem. And linus called Apple paste eaters for HFS...

I'm thinking it may be to do with customer shutdown habits: Hard shutdowns with uncommitted metadata transactions could be shredding folder structures and files.
But that's about my only guess. Does explain the tendency for windows to rot the way I'm seeing it.

I'm hoping to find something workable to not just scrape the volume and spend an eternity reinstalling for 80 year old seniors who can't find "the google."

None of the stuff's encrypted. It's all plaintext.

Very true.
I hope we'll one day see people reject windows like they'd reject a windows phone.

But he's not the one using it, retard.

Have you asked any of the users how they are shutting down their machines? Audit installed software and OS update history? Failed Windows updates have caused some interesting problems in my past, but nothing fucking up the entire filesystem that I've personally witnessed so far, however that being said it would not surprise me.

Is this across all versions of windows or anything specific?

I use NTFS on my 6 external HDDs because of compatibility and shit, and I have to literally run the ntfsfix tool from ntfs-3g at least once a month on them because they shit themselves pretty quickly

Are they encrypted?

>hurr durr something filesystem broken

Not a single clue as to why it might happen cause he can't troubleshoot or even read a syslog apparently, but is able to charge customers.
Provide more details in common denominators if u want a serious answer.

...

In the loo, rameesh

it's not hard shutdowns, it's metadata corruption
it relies too much on the metadata and it fucks up the system on reading
basically, the file system is now a registry and fuck ups expound and corrupt it all

We need to establish a base line

>Which OS version was this problem spotted on
>How old where the installations
>What was their last update
>What software had they installed

bump for op

Bun pin for OPP.