Methods, systems, and computer storage media for providing self-healing operations for root corruptions in a file system are provided. While performing file system operations, the root may be inaccessible by the file system engine for executing file system operations. A root becomes inaccessible for performing file system operations when corrupted. A determination is made that the root having a root data region is corrupted and a self-healing operation should be performed. A root-corruption self-healing operation is executed to re-allocate (or recycle) the root data region to the root. The self-healing operation circumvents a copy-on-write policy of the file system to re-allocate the root data region of the root in-place and transform the root from a corrupted root to a recycled root. A file system data operation, such as a data recovery operation or file system management operation (e.g., a file or directory operation) can be performed using the recycled root.