HOWTO: force filesystem check on reboot in MS Windows (NT family)

These tricks may be well-known, but still handy for busy volumes (e. g., the system one):

0. Open a command prompt (cmd) with administrator privileges (either via "Start → Run..." menu, "<WinKey> + <R>" hotkey, or other methods you like).
1. Two options.
   1. Marking volume "dirty":

      > fsutil dirty set C:
      Volume - C: is now marked dirty
      

   2. A milder option, just scheduling the volume to be checked on startup:

      > chkntfs /C C:
      
      

2. Reboot safely.
3. Watch the CHKDSK operation progress...
4. DONE!
   (You can check the CHKDSK logs later in the "Event Viewer" (eventvwr.msc or simply eventvwr for short)).

References:

• MS TechNet Library - Windows Server:
  • Chkntfs
  • Fsutil dirty
• MS Knowledge Base:
  • CHKNTFS.EXE: What You Can Use It For
• MS Windows XP Professional Product Documentation:
  • Microsoft Windows XP - Chkntfs
  • Microsoft Windows XP - Fsutil: dirty

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Last updated: 2016-05-20

TestDisk & PhotoRec: nice tools to recover lost partitions & files

TestDisk + PhotoRec is a nice toolset to recover lost disk partitions (or at least rescue some files from corrupted filesystems) in case of storage media failures, re-partitioning errors etc.
Works for disk images too.
More to say, it's a free & open source (GPL v2+) cross-platform (Linux, *BSD, Apple Mac OS X, Oracle / Sun Solaris, MS-DOS, MS Windows) software.

Presently, in Debian-based Linux distros, TestDisk & PhotoRec have been packaged into a single testdisk package, so you can install both tools at once:

# apt-get install testdisk