Indexing Service

  • Thread starter Thread starter EricG
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EricG

Hi

I am using PerfectDisc 8 to defrag my drives and have had no problems
getting a complete defrag until recently.

I am now regularly getting a fragmented metadata file called
C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J which I understand relates to the file Indexing System.

Having searched this forum and gleaned some information relating to this, I
have disabled the Indexing Service, unchecked the box in C: Properties so as
to disable file indexing and deleted the file (fsutil.exe usn deletejournal
/D C:) - doing this seemed to get rid of the offending C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J
file. However, after a re-boot, it reappears.

When I run chkdsk c: /f the result shows the usual data plus an entry
"CHKDSK is verifying the journal.....Usn Journal verification complete".

My Laptop, set up the same as my PC, running the same OS (Windows XP Home)
and most of the software on my PC, does not have this problem.

Can anyone tell me why my PC has the file C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J file and
not my Laptop, whether it is indeed related to the Indexing Service, why it
keeps reappearing and whether I can get rid of it once and for all.
 
in message
Hi

I am using PerfectDisc 8 to defrag my drives and have had no
problems
getting a complete defrag until recently.

I am now regularly getting a fragmented metadata file called
C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J which I understand relates to the file
Indexing System.

Having searched this forum and gleaned some information relating to
this, I
have disabled the Indexing Service, unchecked the box in C:
Properties so as
to disable file indexing and deleted the file (fsutil.exe usn
deletejournal
/D C:) - doing this seemed to get rid of the offending
C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J
file. However, after a re-boot, it reappears.

When I run chkdsk c: /f the result shows the usual data plus an
entry
"CHKDSK is verifying the journal.....Usn Journal verification
complete".

My Laptop, set up the same as my PC, running the same OS (Windows XP
Home)
and most of the software on my PC, does not have this problem.

Can anyone tell me why my PC has the file C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J
file and
not my Laptop, whether it is indeed related to the Indexing Service,
why it
keeps reappearing and whether I can get rid of it once and for all.
Click to expand...


Journaling is part of NTFS to help recover from a sudden crash (to
restore files upon reboot into a usable state). NTFS is classed as a
journaling file system. Changes to the files are logged until they
are committed to the hard drive (and a flush is sent to ensure the
drive empties its cache). That way, in case of a power loss, the
logged changes can be applied to the file system to ensure its
integrity (more than for trying to get the pending file updates
applied) when the OS is brought back up and without requiring the use
of CHKDSK (which is required for FAT16/32).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs

I don't think it has anything to do with the Indexing Service. More
likely it is an NTFS journaling logfile; see
http://www.microsoft.com/msj/1099/journal2/journal2.aspx. One user
said this logging got enabled when they upgraded from Pinnacle Studio
9.3 to 9.4 and had to report the bug to that company. Normally the
\$Extend, \$MFT, \$Secure, \$Logfile, and other such NTFS directories
are hidden (they aren't available through the normal Windows API) so
maybe your PerfectDisk is using a kernel-mode driver to see them.

Have you opened a DOS shell and ran "chkdsk /r" to ensure the metadata
for NTFS is okay? It will require you to reboot, and the /r is just
added testing to ensure your drive is okay. If you don't want to use
/r to test your drive's surface, replace it with /f so any problems
will get corrected instead of just reported.

If you want to defrag the NTFS metadata files, you can't do that while
they are inuse which means you can't do that while Windows is running.
For Perfect Disk, you use its offline option to defrag metadata files
and which requires a reboot to do that (because it usually cannot lock
the OS partition). The manual tells you have to defrag metadata; see:

http://ftp.raxco.com/pub/download/pd80/userguides/PDV8_client.pdf

I don't use PerfectDisk. This is just what I found using good ol'
Google and looking at the program author's web site.
 
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