Interesting.

When it comes to chkdsk, I tend to regard it as a simplistic file system recovery tool.

1. It is not a data recovery tool.
2. It does not "repair" a drive; simply marks sectors as unusable.
3. It requires Windows, and is influenced by the file system in use.

Please also remember that there is more than one version of NTFS

Some of you might remember that I got hold of some cheap OEM Vistas a little while back, and built a couple of machines to try it out. I used old technology parts to see what issues there were.

I discover to my horror that it (full) formatted and loaded onto a 60MB "deathstar" that chkdisk and myself had pronounced dead (I had been drinking, and picked the wrong one up). Chkdsk and manufacturer's tools now think that the drive is just fine, and it has been running for several months.

My suspicions are that Vista uses the latest NTFS an zero fills the drive first ("full" format). I suppose that I might have had a similar result if I had used something like Darik's Boot & Nuke to wipe the drive?