In Microsoft Windows clustering environment, you can create quorum disk to sort out the tie-break situations if voting set of the nodes disagree on current cluster state. If MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Service) folder does not exist or it is inaccessible, MSCS service attempts to recover quorum disk. In such circumstances, quorum disk might get damaged after the MSCS attempts to recover quorum disk. This behavior leads to significant data loss and requires data recovery software to be sorted out, if there is no backup in place.

You can check your quorum disk whether it is affected by this problem, using Chkdsk.exe utility in read-only mode. The Chkdsk.exe utility can be used in the read-only mode if the /x or /f options are eliminated. However, you may come across the below error message if your quorum disk is affected by this issue and you run the Chkdsk.exe utility in read-only mode:

“The type of the file system is NTFS. The volume is in use by another process. Chkdsk might report errors when no corruption is present. Volume label is Volume.

WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)... Deleting corrupt attribute record (112, "") from file record segment 3. File verification completed. Errors found.

CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.”

When you come across this behavior of Windows computer, you should not run the Chkdsk.exe utility with /x or /f options. If you do so, you may come across severe data loss situations and further need data recovery to get your mission-critical data back.

Grounds of the problem:

You may come across this behavior of Microsoft Windows operating system when MSCS service attempts to recover a quorum disk from damaged state. In such cases, wrong volume information might be written to quorum volume.

Resolution:

In order to sort out the current problem and perform file data recovery, you can download and install a hotfix provided by Microsoft. It prevents the problem from being occurred in future. However, to recover the lost files and data, you need to opt for third-party applications.

The data recovery tools are powerful enough to carry-out systematic scan of entire hard drive and extract all lost data from it. They have interactive graphical user interface and read-only conduct to offer easy and safe recovery.

Windows Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and efficient utility to ensure absolute recovery in all data loss situations. The software is usable with Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000. It recovers data from NTFS5, NTFS, FAT32, VFAT, FAT16, and FAT12 file system partitions.