Windows Marked Drive as Dirty, Linux won't mount.
 

Hi;

I'm hoping this is an okay place to post this. I recently reinstalled windows XP to a machine also running Debian Etch, Kernel 2.6.18-5. Windows for some unknown reason decided that it wants to run Check Disk on one of my data storage drives (NTFS Drive). and I refuse to let it because I don't trust Check Disk, I don't know if it's me or if it's a common problem especially with systems being booted by both Windows and Linux, But I have had Check Disk "Fix" drives that weren't broken, and whipe the entire drive to "Found XXX" garbage files. the data on my drive is just way too important to let that piece of tripe touch it.

anyway, My problem is that Linux doesn't want to mount the drive because windows has it marked dirty (Using NTFS-3G), and though a forced mount works, The Directory it is supposed to be mounted in is empty.

Is there a way to clear a "dirty" drive without using windows Check Disk? a third party software for either windows or Linux maybe? I have thought about allowing windows to check it, but if It corrupted my drive I would go ballistic... and that is an understatement..

Thanks for your time;
Teddy B

as long as you don't do the check disk the disk will be marked as dirty!.
you can undirty the disk by formatting it.
check disk is reliable enough, no need to be paranoid. anyway forcing ntfs-3G can do worse for your disk. i talk by experience.

so your only option is check the disk!

I forced mounted my NTFS under ntfs-3g and trashed the Vista from fully booting. Had to reinstall. Spent time trying to repair but ntfs has way to many tables to deal with. Never install Vista so first time for that.

Brian

doing an fsck on it will fix the problem under linux and their is a tool in windows (chdsk or something like that, do help in cmd to find it)