Microsoft KB Archive/321939

= CHKDSK May Be Initiated If There Are Open Handles When a Cluster Disk Fails Over =

Article ID: 321939

Article Last Modified on 3/1/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
 * Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q321939



SUMMARY
A chkdsk command may be initiated if you manually fail a disk over or if the disk is failed over by the Cluster service. This behavior can be caused by programs that are not cluster-aware, which have open handles to the disk.



MORE INFORMATION
When the Cluster service fails a group over, it starts by taking all resources offline, starting with the most dependent and moving to the least dependent. The disk frequently is the last resource taken offline because most resources depend on the disk either explicitly or transitively and the disk typically does not have dependencies on other resources. Because all resources in the cluster that depend on the disk are stopped before a failover is initiated, the handles that those programs have open to the disk are destroyed in the failover process.

If a program uses the shared disks and if it is not a clustered resource, any handles to the shared storage are not gracefully closed when the Cluster service fails the disk over. Because these programs are operating outside the Cluster service, the Cluster service cannot shut the programs down or close the handles gracefully. During a failover, the handles to the disk are orphaned, and the disk may be marked for a chkdsk command. If open files that have open handles to them are unexpectedly terminated when a disk is being dismounted, the disk may be flagged for a chkdsk command.

When you bring a disk online, the Cluster service checks to see if a disk has been marked as &quot;dirty&quot; and if it requires a chkdsk command. If the Cluster service sees that the disk has been marked as &quot;dirty,&quot; the Cluster service initiates a chkdsk command before the disk is brought online. Any resources in the cluster that have down-level dependencies on that disk do not come online until the chkdsk command has run and the disk is successfully brought online by the Cluster service.

Currently, there no way to tell exactly why the disk was marked as &quot;dirty&quot; on a disk. However, you can use the following troubleshooting steps to determine the device that set the dirty bit on the disk:
 * Turn off any filter drivers that you do not require such as open file agents and file scanning utilities.
 * Make sure that you are running the correct firmware versions and drivers for your host bus adapters on both nodes. Both nodes must be using the same version of the firmware, BIOS, and drivers on each node to be in a supported environment.
 * Check the system logs for hardware errors.
 * Turn off any programs and services that you do not require that may try to lock file or maintain handles to a disk.

For additional information about 'chkdsk' on a cluster disk, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

176970 How to Run the CHKDSK /F Command on a Shared Cluster Disk

272244 Location of the Chkdsk Results for Windows Clustering Resources

Additional query words: mscs disk CHKDSK failover

Keywords: kbinfo KB321939

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