The real problem with this entire thread comes down to 
NTFS.  This filesystem was designed by Veritas under a 
contract from Microsoft.  However, the only tool that 
Microsoft provides to help fix and manage this filesystem 
type is chkdsk.  There is nothing else (other than third party
tools that usually tie right back into chkdsk).  At best, this 
tool is sloppy and haphazard.  At worst, it will corrupt the 
entire volume and is chock full of bugs (like most of the 
rest of Windows).   Even Veritas has come up with better 
filesystems like vxfs, yet Microsoft won't let them introduce 
it onto Windows (for who knows what reason)

Clearly, Linux has had alternative filesystems for a long 
time (Reiser, ext3, XFS, JFS, etc) and are very mature and
 complete filesystems.  However, Microsoft has not 
extended the same courtesy to the Windows users.  As a 
Windows user, you are completely stuck with NTFS or 
FAT32 as there are no other filesystems supported 
natively. Worse, if you need security on your files, you're 
stuck solely with NTFS without any other alternatives.

I've worked with NTFS in the past, and it's simply an 
unstable filesystem when used in a corporate heavy use 
environment.  We ran a very large database and file 
sharing on two different Dell boxes under Windows.  We 
would consistently have blue screens based on corrupted 
volume messages which would require chkdsk to fix the 
filesystems.  I would spend hours chkdsk'ing the volumes 2,
3, 4 and even 5 times in a row before I could get one clean  
pass.

We finally decided that NTFS was not-ready-for-primetime 
in a production environment and abandoned Windows for 
Linux.  Since that decision, we've had no more problems 
with crashing because of the filesystem or problems 
resulting from the filesystem.  If a Linux system does 
lockup or go down hard (for whatever reason) filesystem 
recovery is easy and painless (thanks to mature 
filesystems under Linux).

For corporate desktops and home use, NTFS is fine.  But, 
when you're jamming hundreds of thousands of files in a 
directory continually or utilizing heavy read/writing in a 
database environment, NTFS is a disaster waiting to 
happen.  I ultimately believe we were continually running 
out of MFT space (NTFS's version of the FAT table) 
without errors stating this fact.  So, the MFT became 
corrupted causing the blue screen, then, subsequently, 
requiring an extended chkdsk process that might not even
complete.

If you value your data, you should opt for a system like a 
Network Appliance system that offers snapshot recovery.  
If you must use NTFS, then I recommend you back up 
your data as frequently as is feasibly possible.  I just can't 
recommend a heavy use fileserver formatted as NTFS in a 
production environment simply based on past experiences.

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