Suspecting Windows 8 is responsible for data corruption on multiple PCs

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

Hello!
I've been repairing PCs for a while now and I have to say that I don't think I've seen nearly as much data corruption as I've seen with Windows 8 PCs. Random bits of data including system files have begun to suddenly disappear from files all across the hard drive. Torrent data that was fine one day will suddenly be corrupt the next. System files on a system that was working fine for days and was shutdown properly will suddenly come back as corrupted across multiple systems.

I'm wondering if a number of people here would be willing to run sfc /scannow in a command prompt with administrative permissions and give me their results for data corruption so we can figure this out and see if Windows 8 really does have a huge problem on their hands. Also, if you do have data corruption of your system files, you can temporarily fix it with dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth from the same command prompt, but it will take a while longer to accomplish and may seem like it hangs at 20%. Don't worry, it's working.

But I believe we have a huge issue on our hands here.

[mikeo01]

I did this yesterday as I seemed to have had some issues with my Windows 8 being extremely slow; on an SSD.

I do have multiple disk check issues which is strange.

But yes I have noticed issues that have emerged on this Windows 8 installation; I'm on 8.1 however.

Whether it's down to the operating system I don't know but this SSD is in perfect health so strange how corruption and strange symptoms have occured.

[Splash]

No issues here

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.



Ah, wait: I'm on 8.1 now. That said, I used 8 from release and didn't have any issues with data corruption that I'm aware of.

[stilkun]

I am running Windows 8 Pro 64 bit system and have no data or system files corruption. I am running OS on SSD, games on 1st HDD and all my data are on the 2nd HDD. Running all the latest patches and update on this system.

C:\Windows\system32>sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

[peterb]

TBH, if there was a general issue with NTFS under Windows 8, it would almost certainly have been thoroughly reported by now, given the roll out of the OS.

If you are experiencing issues, it will probably be a problem with your system, either memory or the SSD. My own suspicion would be with the disk - either the disk itself or a connection problem.

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

TBH, if there was a general issue with NTFS under Windows 8, it would almost certainly have been thoroughly reported by now, given the roll out of the OS.

If you are experiencing issues, it will probably be a problem with your system, either memory or the SSD. My own suspicion would be with the disk - either the disk itself or a connection problem.

As I had said in my initial post, this has been across multiple systems including one new installation straight from Dell. It's also occurred on a new-ish Toshiba laptop that I'm presently using on a few occasions. Both systems are shutdown properly and have had random system file corruption show up for no apparent reason. I didn't say that there was a problem with NTFS, but I do suspect a problem with the write-cache buffer not writing properly sometimes when under heavy loads. Note that I said suspect.
Anyhow, as to thorough reports, that may not actually be the case as an issue with defrag has existed since the pre-release of 8.1 that was reported but never fixed and affects multiple users. No fix has been offered for it either beyond a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows which results in the same error. But that's unrelated.
Anyhow, the corruption started in Windows 8 and was repaired using the method I described previously. However, when Windows 8.1 was installed, everything checked out fine for a few weeks until explorer crashed and recovered itself. I then checked the system files and a number of them had randomly corrupted their selves. A similar issue with the Dell occurred where it was having explorer crash now and then before showing system file corruption. (For those of you who don't know, explorer is the name of the Desktop program)
So, it's not a problem with the drives as they check out with S.M.A.R.T. testing, not a problem with the processors as far as I can tell since I've tested one with the Intel Burn Test. I've tested everything I can think of to test and it seems like it's a software issue of some sort.

[tazen]

I'm having a similar problem on a new Windows 8.1 system. I discovered it when doing MD5 compares of files that had been copied from one disk to another, something I often do with important files. Then I wrote a program for doing some automated long time testing and it revealed there is periodic random file corruption on the system when copying files from one disk to another. E.g. the program may run for many hours and report no errors, then suddenly random errors start to come and may keep coming for many hours. Then suddenly it stops again and there may be no errors for many hours. It's completely unpredictable.

I've checked some of the corrupted files in a hex editor and generally it's one, sometimes a few, bytes that change their value(s) during copying of the file. To my knowledge a system scan is not capable of recognizing such errors.

At first I though it was a hardware problem (e.g. faulty disk controller), but some of my latest tests seem to indicate it may not be. E.g. I may be getting errors constantly for many hours when testing, then I reboot the machine, restart the test program and now there suddenly are no errors for many hours. And vice versa.

I've also made as well as restored a number of system images, some as large as 30 GB, using a DOS based program, with byte-for-byte verify, and there's never been a single error when making or restoring these images. So I suspect it's either a Windows problem or a problem with some installed software.

RAM has been tested several times with Memtest86+ for many hours, no errors. SATA 300 cables have been replaced with brand new SATA 600 cables (should be better shielded) but that made no difference. No disk/SMART problems according to HDSentinel. There are 4 disks in the machine and the problem affects them all.