If you are trying to determine whether a fi le is used by FRS or the DLT Client service, you could use the FSUtil ObjectID command to see if the fi le has an object identifi er fi eld set. Type fsutil objectid query FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le or folder you want to examine. If the fi le has an object identifi er fi eld set, it is displayed. If a fi le doesn’t have an object identifi er fi eld set, an error message is displayed stating “The specifi ed fi le has no object ID.” Reparse Points On NTFS volumes, a fi le or folder can contain a reparse point. Reparse points are fi le system objects with special attribute tags that are used to extend the functionality in the I/O subsystem. When a program sets a reparse point, it stores an attribute tag as well as a data segment. The attribute tag identifi es the purpose of the reparse point and details how the reparse point is to be used. The data segment provides any additional data needed during reparsing. Reparse points are used for directory junction points and volume mount points. Direc- tory junctions enable you to create a single local namespace using local folders, local volumes, and network shares. Mount points enable you to mount a local volume to an empty NTFS folder. Both directory junction points and volume mount points use reparse points to mark NTFS folders with surrogate names. When a fi le or folder containing a reparse point used for a directory junction point or a volume mount point is read, the reparse point causes the pathname to be reparsed and a surrogate name to be substituted for the original name. For example, if you were to create a mount point with the fi le path C:\Data that is used to mount a hard disk drive, the reparse point is triggered whenever the fi le system opens C:\Data and points the fi le system to the volume you’ve mounted in that folder. The actual attribute tag and data for the reparse point would look similar to the following: Reparse Tag Value : 0xa0000003 Tag value: Microsoft Tag value: Name Surrogate Tag value: Mount Point Substitute Name offset: 0 Substitute Name length: 98 Print Name offset: 100 Print Name Length: 0 Substitute Name: \??\Volume{3796c3c1-5106-11d7-911c-806d6172696f}\ Reparse Data Length: 0x0000006e Reparse Data: 0000: 00 00 62 00 64 00 00 00 5c 00 3f 00 3f 00 5c 00 b.d .\.?.?.\. 0010: 56 00 6f 00 6c 00 75 00 6d 00 65 00 7b 00 33 00 V.o.l.u.m.e.{.3. 0020: 37 00 39 00 36 00 63 00 33 00 63 00 31 00 2d 00 7.9.6.c.3.c.1.-. 0030: 35 00 31 00 30 00 36 00 2d 00 31 00 31 00 64 00 5.1.0.6.-.1.1.d. 0040: 37 00 2d 00 39 00 31 00 31 00 63 00 2d 00 38 00 7.-.9.1.1.c.-.8. 0050: 30 00 36 00 64 00 36 00 31 00 37 00 32 00 36 00 0.6.d.6.1.7.2.6. 0060: 39 00 36 00 66 00 7d 00 5c 00 00 00 00 00 9.6.f.}.\ . Advanced NTFS Features 517 Chapter 16 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. The reparse attribute tag is defi ned by the fi rst series of values, which identifi es the reparse point as a Microsoft Name Surrogate Mount Point and specifi es the surrogate name to be substituted for the original name. The reparse data follows the attribute tag values and in this case provides the fully expressed surrogate name. Examine Reparse Points Using the FSUtil ReparsePoint command, you can examine reparse information associ- ated with a fi le or folder. Type fsutil reparsepoint query FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le or folder you want to examine. Reparse points are also used by fi le system fi lter drivers to mark fi les so they are used with that driver. When NTFS opens a fi le associated with a fi le system fi lter driver, it locates the driver and uses the fi lter to process the fi le as directed by the reparse infor- mation. Reparse points are used in this way to implement Remote Storage. Sparse Files Often scientifi c or other data collected through sampling is stored in large fi les that are primarily empty except for sparsely populated sections that contain the actual data. For example, a broad-spectrum signal recorded digitally from space might have only sev- eral minutes of audio for each hour of actual recording. In this case, a multiple- gigabyte audio fi le such as the one depicted in Figure 16-5 might have only a few gigabytes of meaningful information. Because there are large sections of empty space and limited areas of meaningful data, the fi le is said to be sparsely populated and can also be referred to as a sparse fi le. Stored normally, the fi le would use 20 GB of space on the volume. If you mark the fi le as sparse, however, NTFS allocates space only for actual data and marks empty space as nonallocated. In other words, any meaningful or nonzero data is marked as allocated and written to disk, and any data composed of zeros is marked as nonallocated and is not explicitly written to disk. In this example, this means the fi le uses only 5 GB of space, which is marked as allocated, and has nonallocated space of 15 GB. For nonallocated space, NTFS records only information about how much nonallocated space there is, and when you try to read data in this space, it returns zeros. This allows NTFS to store the fi le in the smallest amount of disk space possible while still being able to reconstruct the fi le’s allocated and nonallocated space. In theory, all this works great, but it is up to the actual program working with the sparse fi le to determine which data is meaningful and which isn’t. Programs do this by explicitly specifying the data for which space should be allocated. In Windows Server 2008, several services use sparse fi les. One of these is the Indexing Service, which stores its catalogs as sparse fi les. Examine Reparse Points Using the FSUtil ReparsePoint command, you can examine reparse information associ- ated with a fi le or folder. Type fsutil reparsepoint query FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le or folder you want to examine. Chapter 16 518 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Unused Space Used Space 20 GB Data File Unused Space 15 GB Actual Space Used by Data 5 GB Size of Sparse File on Disk 5 GB Figure 16-5 Using sparse files. Using the FSUtil Sparse command, you can easily determine whether a fi le has the sparse attribute set. Type fsutil sparse queryfl ag FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le you want to examine, such as fsutil sparse queryfl ag c:\data\catalog.wci\00010002.ci If the fi le has the sparse attribute, this command returns This fi le is set as sparse You can examine sparse fi les to determine where the byte ranges that contain meaning- ful (nonzero) data are located by using FSUtil Sparse as well. Type fsutil sparse query- range FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le you want to examine, such as fsutil sparse queryrange c:\data\catalog.wci\00010002.ci The output is the byte ranges of meaningful data within the fi le, such as sparse range [0] [28672] In this particular case, the output specifi es that there’s meaningful data at the start of the fi le to byte 28672. You can mark fi les as sparse as well. Type fsutil sparse setfl ag FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le you want to mark as sparse. Advanced NTFS Features 519 Chapter 16 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Transactional NTFS Windows Server 2008 supports transactional NTFS and Self-Healing NTFS. Transac- tional NTFS allows fi le operations on an NTFS volume to be performed transactionally. This means programs can use a transaction to group together sets of fi le and Registry operations so that all of them succeed or none of them succeed. While a transaction is active, changes are not visible outside of the transaction. Changes are committed and written fully to disk only when a transaction is completed successfully. If a transaction fails or is incomplete, the program rolls back the transactional work to restore the fi le system to the state it was in prior to the transaction. Transactions that span multiple volumes are coordinated by the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM). The KTM supports independent recovery of volumes if a transaction fails. The local resource manager for a volume maintains a separate transaction log and is responsible for maintaining threads for transactions separate from threads that per- form the fi le work. Using the FSUtil Transaction command, you can easily determine transactional infor- mation. You can list currently running transactions by typing fsutil transaction list at the command prompt. You can display transactional information for a specifi c fi le by typing fsutil transaction fi leinfo FilePath at the command prompt, where FilePath is the path to the fi le you want to examine, such as fsutil transaction fi leinfo c:\journal\ls-dts.mdb Traditionally, you have had to use the Check Disk tool to fi x errors and inconsisten- cies in NTFS volumes on a disk. Because this process can disrupt the availability of Windows systems, Windows Server 2008 uses Self-Healing NTFS to protect fi le systems without having to use separate maintenance tools to fi x problems. Because much of the self-healing process is enabled and performed automatically, you might need to manually perform volume maintenance only when you are notifi ed by the operating system that a problem cannot be corrected automatically. If such an error occurs, Windows Server 2008 will notify you about the problem and provide possible solutions. Self-Healing NTFS has many advantages over Check Disk, including the following:  Check Disk must have exclusive access to volumes, which means system and boot volumes can be checked only when the operating system starts up. On the other hand, with Self-Healing NTFS, the fi le system is always available and does not need to be corrected offl ine (in most cases).  Self-Healing NTFS attempts to preserve as much data as possible if corruption occurs and reduces failed fi le system mounting that previously could occur if a volume was known to have errors or inconsistencies. During restart, Self-Healing NTFS repairs the volume immediately so that it can be mounted.  Self-Healing NTFS reports changes made to the volume during repair through existing Chkdsk.exe mechanisms, directory notifi cations, and update sequence number (USN) journal entries. This feature also allows authorized users and Chapter 16 520 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. administrators to monitor repair operations through Verifi cation, Waiting For Repair Completion, and Progress Status messages.  Self-Healing NTFS can recover a volume if the boot sector is readable but does not identify an NTFS volume. In this case, you must run an offl ine tool that repairs the boot sector and then allow Self-Healing NTFS to initiate recovery. Although Self-Healing NTFS is a terrifi c enhancement, at times you might want to (or might have to) manually check the integrity of a disk. In these cases, you can use Check Disk (Chkdsk.exe) to check for and, optionally, repair problems found on FAT, FAT32, and NTFS volumes. Using File-Based Compression File-based compression allows you to reduce the number of bits and bytes in fi les so that they use less space on a disk. The Windows operating system supports two types of compression: NTFS compression, which is a built-in feature of NTFS, and com- pressed (zipped) folders, which is an additional feature of Windows available on both FAT and NTFS volumes. NTFS Compression Windows allows you to enable compression when you format a volume using NTFS. When a drive is compressed, all fi les and folders stored on the drive are automatically compressed when they are created. This compression is transparent to users, who can open and work with compressed fi les and folders just as they do with regular fi les and folders. Behind the scenes, Windows decompresses the fi le or folder when it is opened and compresses it again when it is closed. Although this can decrease a computer’s performance, it saves space on the disk because compressed fi les and folders use less space. You can turn on compression after formatting volumes as well, or if desired turn on compression only for specifi c fi les and folders. After you compress a folder, any new fi les added or copied to the folder are compressed automatically and they remain com- pressed even if you later move them to an uncompressed folder on an NTFS volume. Moving uncompressed fi les to compressed folders affects their compression attribute as well. If you move an uncompressed fi le from a different drive to a compressed drive or folder, the fi le is compressed. However, if you move an uncompressed fi le to a com- pressed folder on the same NTFS drive, the fi le isn’t compressed. Finally, if you move a compressed fi le to a FAT16 or FAT32 volume, the fi le is uncompressed because FAT16 and FAT32 volumes do not support compression. To compress or uncompress a drive, follow these steps: 1. Right-click the drive that you want to compress or uncompress in Windows Explorer or in the Disk Management Volume List view, and then select Properties. This displays the disk’s Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 16-6. Using File-Based Compression 521 Chapter 16 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Figure 16-6 You can compress entire volumes or perform selective compression for specific files and folders. 2. Select or clear the Compress This Drive To Save Disk Space check box as appropriate. When you click OK, the Confi rm Attribute Changes dialog box shown in Figure 16-7 is displayed. Figure 16-7 Choose a compression option. 3. If you want to apply changes only to the root folder of the disk, select Apply Changes To X Only. Otherwise, accept the default, which will compress the entire contents of the disk. Click OK. CAUTION ! Although Windows Server 2008 will let you compress system volumes, this is not recom- mended because the operating system will need to decompress and compress system fi les each time they are opened, which can seriously impact server performance. Addi- tionally, you can’t use compression and encryption together. You can use one feature or the other, but not both. CAUTION ! Chapter 16 522 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. You can selectively compress and uncompress fi les and folders as well. The advantage here is that this affects only a part of a disk, such as a folder and its subfolders, rather than the entire disk. To compress or uncompress a fi le or folder, follow these steps: 1. In Windows Explorer, right-click the fi le or folder that you want to compress or uncompress, and then select Properties. 2. On the General tab of the related Properties dialog box, click Advanced. This displays the Advanced Attributes dialog box shown in Figure 16-8. Select or clear the Compress Contents To Save Disk Space check box as appropriate. Click OK twice. Figure 16-8 Use the Advanced Attributes dialog box to compress the file or folder. 3. If you are changing the compression attributes of a folder with subfolders, the Confi rm Attribute Changes dialog box is displayed. If you want to apply the changes only to the fi les in the folder and not fi les in subfolders of the folder, select Apply Changes To X Only. Otherwise, accept the default, which will apply the changes to the folder, its subfolders, and fi les. Click OK. Windows Server 2008 also provides command-line utilities for compressing and uncompressing your data. The compression utility is called Compact (Compact.exe). The decompression utility is called Expand (Expand.exe). You can use Compact to quickly determine whether fi les in a directory are compressed. At the command line, change to the directory you want to examine and enter compact without any additional parameters. If you want to check the directory and all subdirec- tories, enter compact /s. The output will list the compression status and compression ratio on every fi le and the fi nal summary details will tell you exactly how many fi les and directories were examined and found to be compressed, such as: Of 15435 fi les within 822 directories 0 are compressed and 15435 are not compressed. 2,411,539,448 total bytes of data are stored in 2,411,539,448 bytes. The compression ratio is 1.0 to 1. Using File-Based Compression 523 Chapter 16 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Compressed (Zipped) Folders Compressed (zipped) folders are another option for compressing fi les and folders. When you compress data using this technique, you use Zip compression technology to reduce the number of bits and bytes in fi les and folders so that they use less space on a disk. Compressed (zipped) folders are identifi ed with a zipper on the folder icon and are saved with the .zip fi le extension. Note At the time of this writing, compressed (zipped) folders were not available on 64-bit edi- tions of Windows Server 2008. Further, if you install a Zip utility, the compressed folder icon for this utility might be used and some of the built-in compressed (zipped) folder features can change. Compressed (zipped) folders have several advantages over NTFS compression. Because Zip technology is an extension of the operating system rather than the fi le system, com- pressed (zipped) folders can be used on both FAT and NTFS volumes. Zipped folders can be password protected to safeguard their contents and can be sent by e-mail. They can also be transferred using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or other protocols. An added benefi t of zipped folders is that some programs can be run directly from compressed folders without having to be decompressed. You can also open fi les directly from zipped folders. You can create a zipped folder by selecting a fi le, folder, or a group of fi les and folders in Windows Explorer, right-clicking, pointing to Send To, and clicking Compressed (Zipped) Folder. The zipped folder is named automatically by using the fi le name of the last item selected and adding the .zip extension. If you double-click a zipped folder in Windows Explorer, you can access and work with its contents. As shown in Figure 16-9, the zipped folder’s contents are listed according to fi le name, type, and date. The fi le information also shows the packed fi le size, the original fi le size, and the compression ratio. Double-clicking a program in a zipped folder runs it (as long as it doesn’t require access to other fi les). Double-clicking a fi le in a zipped folder opens it for viewing or editing. Figure 16-9 Compressed (zipped) folders can be accessed and used like other folders. Note At the time of this writing, compressed (zipped) folders were not available on 64-bit edi- tions of Windows Server 2008. Further, if you install a Zip utility, the compressed folder icon for this utility might be used and some of the built-in compressed (zipped) folder features can change. Chapter 16 524 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. While you’re working with a zipped folder, you can perform tasks similar to those you can with regular folders. You can do the following:  Add other fi les, programs, or folders to the zipped folder by dragging them to it.  Copy a fi le in the zipped folder and paste it into a different folder.  Remove a fi le from the zipped folder using the Cut command so that you can paste it into a different folder.  Delete a fi le or folder by selecting it and clicking Delete. You also have the option to perform additional tasks, which are unique to zipped fold- ers. You can choose File, Extract All to start the Extraction Wizard, which can be used to extract all the fi les in the zipped folder and copy them to a new location. You can click File, Add A Password to add a password to the zipped folder to control access to it. Managing Disk Quotas Even with the large disk drives available today, you’ll often fi nd that hard disk space is at a premium, and this is where disk quotas come in handy. Disk quotas are a built-in feature of NTFS that help you manage and limit disk space usage. How Quota Management Works Using disk quotas, you can monitor and control the amount of disk space people who access the network can use. Without quota management it is hard to monitor the amount of space being used by individual users and even harder to control the total amount of space they can use. I refer to monitoring and controlling separately because there’s a very important difference between monitoring disk space usage and control- ling it—and the disk quota system allows you to perform these tasks separately or together. You can, in fact, do the following:  Confi gure the disk quota system to monitor disk space usage only, allowing administrators to check disk space usage manually  Confi gure the disk quota system to monitor disk space usage and generate warn- ings when users exceed predefi ned usage levels  Confi gure the disk quota system to monitor disk space usage, generate warnings when users exceed predefi ned usage levels, and enforce the limits by denying disk space to users who exceed the quota limit Your organization’s culture will probably play a major role in the disk quota technique you use. In some organizations the culture is such that it is acceptable to monitor space usage and periodically notify users that they are over recommended limits, but it wouldn’t be well received if administrators enforced controls that limited disk space usage to specifi c amounts. In other organizations, especially larger organizations where there might be hundreds or thousands of employees on the network, it can make sense Managing Disk Quotas 525 Chapter 16 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. to have some controls in place and users might be more understanding of specifi c controls. Controls at some point become a matter of necessity to help ensure that the administrative staff can keep up with the disk space needs of the organization. Disk quotas are confi gured on a per-volume basis. When you enable disk quotas, all users who store data on a volume will be affected by the quota. You can set exceptions for individual users as well that either set new limits or remove the limits altogether. As users create fi les and folders on a volume, an ownership fl ag is applied that says that this particular user owns the fi le or folder. Thus, if a user creates a fi le or folder on a volume that user is the owner of, the fi le or folder and the space used counts toward the user’s quota limit. However, because each volume is managed separately, there is no way to set a specifi c limit for all volumes on a server or across the enterprise. Note For NTFS compressed fi les and sparse fi les, the space usage reported can refl ect total space of fi les rather than the actual space the fi les use. This happens because the quota system reads the total space used by the fi le rather than its reduced fi le size. Ownership of fi les and folders can change in several scenarios. If a user creates a copy of a fi le owned by someone else, the copy is owned by that user. This occurs because a fi le is created when the copy is made. File and folder ownership can also change when fi les are restored from backup. This can happen if you restore the fi les to a volume other than the one the fi les were created on and copy the fi les over to the original volume. Here, during the copy operation, the administrator becomes the owner of the fi les. A workaround for this is to restore fi les and folders to a different location on the same volume and then move the fi les and folders rather than copying them. When you move fi les and folders from one location to another on the same volume, the original owner- ship information is retained. Administrators can be assigned as the owners of fi les in other ways as well, such as when they install the operating system or application software. To ensure that admin- istrators can always install programs, restore data, and perform other administrative tasks, members of the Administrators group don’t have a quota limit as a general rule. This is true even when you enforce disk quotas for all users. In fact, for the Administra- tors group, the only type of quota you can set is a warning level that warns administra- tors when they’ve used more than a set amount of space on a volume. When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense—you don’t want to get into a situation where adminis- trators can’t recover the system because of space limitations. That said, you can apply quotas to individual users—even those who are members of the Administrators group. You do this by creating a separate quota entry for each user. The only account that cannot be restricted in this way is the built-in Administrator account. If you try to set a limit on the Administrator account, the limit is not applied. Note For NTFS compressed fi les and sparse fi les, the space usage reported can refl ect total space of fi les rather than the actual space the fi les use. This happens because the quota system reads the total space used by the fi le rather than its reduced fi le size. Chapter 16 526 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. [...]... File sharing is one of the most fundamental features of a file server, and file servers running Windows Server 2008 have many file sharing features The basic component that makes file sharing possible is the Server service, which is responsible for sharing file and printer resources over the network Understanding File-Sharing Models Windows Server 2008 supports two file-sharing models: standard file sharing... more often you should run this tool Windows Vista with SP1 or later and Windows Server 2008 automatically perform cyclic pickup defragmentation With this feature, when a scheduled defragmentation pass is stopped and rerun, the computer automatically picks up the next unfinished volume in line to be defragmented When you enable automatic defragmentation, Windows Server 2008 runs Disk Defragmenter automatically... Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems looks at structural integrity, but won’t check for or attempt to repair corrupted data within files that appear to be structurally intact Check Disk has two modes in which it can be run It can analyze a disk, checking for errors, but not repairing them Or it can analyze a disk and attempt to repair any errors found New for Windows Server 2008 is that Check... volume, files, folders, the page file if one exists on the volume, and the MFT Being able to check the MFT is a new feature for Windows Server 2008 Another new feature is the ability to defragment volumes with cluster sizes greater than 4 KB 544 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Note Disk Defragmenter needs at least 15 percent free space to defragment a disk completely Disk Defragmenter... case of serious disk error Windows Server 2008 provides a tool for defragmenting volumes called the Disk Defragmenter Unlike Check Disk, which cannot check and repair the operating system volume while it is in use, Disk Defragmenter can, in most cases, perform online defragmentation of any volume, including the operating system volume To reduce fragmentation, Windows Server 2008 can manually or automatically... permissions to public files and public folders Windows Server 2008 can use either or both sharing models at any time However, standard file sharing offers more security and better protection than public fi le sharing, and increasing security is essential to protecting your organization’s data Chapter 17 You can configure the basic fi le-sharing settings for a server using Network And Sharing Center Separate... don’t want frustrated users; you want happy users Second, you should be encouraging users to store more of their important fi les on central file servers, not less Central file servers should be a part of regular enterprise-wide backup routines because corporate servers and backing up data safeguards it from loss In addition, with the Volume Shadow Copy service, shadow copies of fi les on shared folders... report of the analysis and repair operations as detailed in “Analyzing FAT Volumes by Using ChkDsk” on the next page and “Analyzing NTFS Volumes by Using ChkDsk” on page 539 538 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Table 16-6 Command-Line Parameters for ChkDsk Option/Parameter Description Volume Sets the volume to work with Filename On FAT/FAT32, specifies files to check for fragmentation... get an analysis report For FAT volumes, a disk analysis report looks like this: The type of the file system is FAT Volume DATA3 created 2/19 /2008 5:58 PM Volume Serial Number is 7D11-2345 Windows is verifying files and folders File and folder verification is complete Windows has checked the file system and found no problems 209,489,920 24,576 12,288 200,679,936 8,773,120 bytes bytes bytes bytes bytes total... records in use Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark Chapter 16 WARNING! F parameter not specified Running CHKDSK in read-only mode 540 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems and determines which clusters the file records are stored in and then compares this with the volume’s cluster bitmap stored in the $Bitmap metadata fi le Any discrepancies are noted . disk. Because this process can disrupt the availability of Windows systems, Windows Server 2008 uses Self-Healing NTFS to protect fi le systems without. Disk needs exclusive access to some Windows files to fix errors. Chapter 16 536 Chapter 16 Managing Windows Server 2008 File Systems Please purchase PDF