How to Avoid Windows 7 'Corrupt Disk' Errors

If you install Windows 7 on an apparently clean and perfectly nice partition created & formatted with Acronis Disk Director (like I did) you will suffer from a stream of seemingly never-ending The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable errors, especially when installing new software.

Don't panic!, your disk is not corrupted.  I too was alarmed at first and immediately started running CHKDSK which didn't help at all because the disk was fine.  The problem is with an incompatibility between Acronis Disk Director (and presumable other Acronis tools that format the disk) and Windows 7.  Now, you can still quite happily install programs on your other partitions (if you still have them) that were created for XP/Vista but not on your new partition that I presume you created explicitly for Windows 7 in the first place - which is just annoying.

There are two ways to solve this problem.

Solution 1.

1. re-boot into XP/Vista
2. use the Disk Management console (under Administrative Tools -> Computer Management) tool OR your favourite paritioning tool to delete the Windows 7 partition & re-create it
3. this is the part that makes the difference.  Using the Windows disk management console, format the new partition (use the normal slow format, NOT the Quick Format)
   
   
4. re-install Windows 7 - be sure to select 'Custom Install' and select your newly formatted partition.  All the 'corrupt disk' error messages will now disappear.  If you do get them at some point, it most likely is a corrupt disk but so far i've installed lots of apps and it's working perfectly

Solution 2.

1. Using your Windows 7 installation DVD, select a custom install and let the installation format your partition for you.  This is the easiest solution if you have your Windows installation DVD handy.