EA records processed?

[THAANSA3]

Hi,

I have a question: What are EA records? Whenever I run the check disk program, it reports at 10 percent. It usually would say 0 bad files reported, 0 EA records processed, and so on. Well, recently, it reported that I had 2 EA records processed. Does anyone know what that means? Does that mean something is wrong with my hard drive or my copy of Windows Vista? If more information is needed, I can try to provide it. Any information would be most appreciated.

THAANSA3

[AKAJohnDoe]

EA is probably extended attributes. Sort of a holdover from back when filenames could only be 8 bytes and you ended up with those funky Prog~1 file/directory names. OS/2 or NT4 probably still used them. I would be surprised if current file systems still do, but, hey, there's still NETBIOS, so anything is possible.

[AKAJohnDoe]

I found a couple of references if you want to know more:

• How NTFS Works
• NTFS File Attributes
• Extended Attributes in Various Operating Systems File Systems

[THAANSA3]

Thanks, AKA. I read that and was unable to find out if it's a bad thing or not. Since nothing was mentioned, I guess I'll just assume that I'm okay. However, the fact that it went from 0 to 2 will still continue to bother me a little.

[AKAJohnDoe]

Do you have multiple operating systems into which you sometime boot?

[THAANSA3]

Do you have multiple operating systems into which you sometime boot?

Yes, I do. I have XP on another drive.