Fix Windows 7 Disk Volumes Corruption and Data Loss for 2+TB HDDs

Microsoft has confirmed an issue for customers running Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in which the platforms can corrupt disk volumes and lead to data loss on computers with HDDs larger than 2 terabytes (TB).

According to the Redmond company, in addition to running either Windows 7 or Windows server 2008 R2 on a machine equipped with hard disk drive with more than 2 terabytes of disk space, users also need to have the operating systems configured to save dump files to a volume on the HDD.

In this context, the results might end up upsetting customers, the software giant warned.

“Some data of the dump file is offset at a disk offset greater than the 2 terabyte address of the hard disk drive,” Microsoft informed.

“The operating system crashes, generates a Stop code error message, and saves memory data to a dump file,” the company added.

This issue can lead to one or more hard disk volumes becoming corrupted. Obviously, in such a case the data saved on the HDD will be lost entirely, Microsoft noted.

Furthermore, according to the company, in the case in which this problem affects the volume housing the system partition, customers will no longer be able to start the computer.

“This issue also occurs when the operating system enters into hibernation and generates a Hiberfile.sys file that is at a disk offset greater than the 2 terabyte disk offset of the hard disk drive,” Microsoft explained.

Microsoft noted that in this specific scenario described above, the crash dump disk driver (Diskdump.sys) is simply incapable of addressing more than 2 terabytes of disk space.

“The Diskdump.sys driver can address up to 2 to the power of 32 sectors. If the sector size is 512 bytes, the driver can address up to 2 terabytes of disk space,” the company said.

“If the actual offset is larger than this limitation, the driver incorrectly truncates the offset and saves data to a wrong location. Therefore, one or more volumes on the disk are corrupted,” the software giant explained.

Microsoft is already offering a hotfix for this issue. However, the company is warning customers that they need to be affected by this specific problem in order to deploy the fix, as it needs additional testing.

Furthermore, the Redmond company is actually limiting access to the hotfix, and affected customers need to contact Microsoft Support directly in order to resolve their issues.