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I ran chkdisk on my misbehaving Dell Vostro Laptop's C: (NTFS) from the command line in Safe mode and it shows:

The Master File Table's Bitmap Attribute is incorrect.  
The Volume Bitmap is incorrect.

What do these usually mean? Are these signs of impending HDD failure or is it still worth running chkdisk /F /R & trying to fix the problems?

Should I be cloning the disk (say, with dd or ddrescue) before running chkdisk in repair mode?

Context: Win7 Dell Vostro Laptop that hangs / slows down after Login

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    I would back up important files to an external drive before running chkdsk /r or /f
    – Moab
    Commented Feb 22, 2016 at 19:04

2 Answers 2

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TThe NTFS $MFT or $BITMAP metafiles may become corrupted and result in lost disk space. To identify and fix this issue, run the chkdsk /F command against the volume in question. Toward the end of chkdsk process, you receive the following message if the $BITMAP metafile needs to be adjusted: Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system.

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The $BitMap is a special file within the NTFS file system. This file keeps track of all of the used and unused clusters on an NTFS volume.

Simply run chkdisk /F to repair this internal NTFS file.

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  • Thanks! I will. Is there a risk of chkdisk /F making things worse or irrecoverable? Is the bitmap being bad related to a failing drive or unrelated?
    – curious_cat
    Commented Feb 21, 2016 at 12:02
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    make a forensic system image backup if you think it may cause issues. But correcting the bitmap should be no real issue.
    – magicandre1981
    Commented Feb 21, 2016 at 19:08

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