Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home User's Guide
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Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home .........................................................................5 2 Installation and upgrade ........................................................................................................7 2.1 Hardware requirements ............................................................................................................7 2.2 Supported operating systems ..................................................................
5 Volume operations .............................................................................................................. 25 5.1 Creating a volume ....................................................................................................................25 5.2 Resizing a volume ....................................................................................................................27 5.3 Copying a volume .....................................................................
7 Tools ................................................................................................................................... 49 7.1 Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................................................49 7.1.1 7.1.2 7.2 8 Acronis Recovery Expert ..........................................................................................................56 Acronis OS Selector ............................................................
1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home Acronis® Disk Director® 11 is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing disks and volumes. With a comprehensive set of operations, you can organize your hard disk and volume configuration for optimal performance, while keeping your data safe. Key features Acronis Disk Director offers many features including: Create both basic and dynamic volumes The handy Create Volume wizard has been improved to support dynamic volumes creation.
Delete volumes New! Change file systems New! Clean up disks New! Hide/unhide volumes New! Specify i-node density New! Change a cluster size Explore volume data, even on Linux volumes before performing operations Preview changes made in disk and volume layout before applying them Browse through the detailed information about all hard disks, volumes and file systems Acronis Recovery Expert Helps you to recover accidentally lost or deleted volumes on basic MBR disks.
2 Installation and upgrade This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation and guides you through the installation and upgrade of Acronis Disk Director. In this section Hardware requirements............................................................................. 7 Supported operating systems .................................................................... 7 Supported file systems ...............................................................................
2.3 Supported file systems Acronis Disk Director supports the following file systems for performing operations: FAT16 FAT32 NTFS Ext2 Ext3 Reiser3 Linux SWAP The operations resulting in a change of volume size—that is: Create (p. 25), Resize (p. 27), Copy (p. 28), Move (p. 28), Merge (p. 30), Split (p. 31)—are not available for the XFS, Reiser4, HPFS and JFS file systems. 2.4 Supported media Hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD) USB 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.
During the installation of Acronis OS Selector, the hidden system folder BOOTWIZ will be created on your machine to keep the program loader. Acronis OS Selector will also copy operating system files found on your machine into this folder to avoid problems during the booting process and to simplify adding a new operating system in the future. Acronis OS Selector can be installed in the Typical or Custom mode.
Upgrading from the demo version of Acronis Disk Director 11 If you already have the demo version (p. 9) of Acronis Disk Director 11 installed and want to upgrade it to a full version: 1. Run Acronis Disk Director. 2. Select Help > Enter license key from the top menu, and then type in your license key for Acronis Disk Director. 2.
3 Basic concepts This section gives you a clear understanding of basic and dynamic disks and volume types. After reading this section, you will know the advantages and limitations of each possible volume configuration. In addition, you will be able to decide what types of disks and volumes best suit your needs for organizing data storage. In this section Basic and dynamic disks ...........................................................................11 Types of basic volumes .............................
By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk (p. 45). You may need to do so, for example, to install an operating system other than Windows on that disk. Converting a dynamic disk to basic may require deleting some volumes on it, such as volumes that occupy more than one disk. 3.2 Types of basic volumes A basic disk can store two types of volumes: primary volumes and logical volumes.
Striped volume A volume that resides on two or more dynamic disks and whose data is evenly distributed across equally-sized portions of disk space (called stripes) on those disks. Access to data on striped volumes is usually faster than on other types of dynamic volumes, because it can be performed simultaneously on multiple hard disks. Unlike a mirrored volume (p. 88), a striped volume does not contain redundant information, so it is not fault-tolerant. A striped volume is also known as a RAID-0 volume.
System volume This is the volume from which any of the installed Windows operating systems starts—even if more than one is installed. The system volume contains files that are necessary to start Windows, such as boot.ini and Ntldr. There is always one system volume, whereas each of the installed Windows operating systems usually stores its files on its own volume, called a boot volume. Boot volume This is the volume on which the files of a particular Windows operating system are stored.
What is the cause of misalignment All Windows operating systems earlier than Vista use a factor of 512 bytes to create volume clusters. The volume start is aligned to 512-byte sectors. Also, these operating systems use the Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing scheme. Volumes created with this scheme are aligned by cylinders/tracks of the disk. Usually, a track consists of 63 physical sectors.
After the volumes are created, you can perform other operations with them (including changing their size) under any disk layout. How to fix volume misalignment using Acronis Disk Director Suppose that you have already created basic volumes on a disk with a 4-KB sector size, using Windows XP. Volumes already contain data. To align the misaligned volumes on the disk using Acronis Disk Director, clone this disk to another and then clone it back—see Disk cloning (p. 41).
4 Getting started After reading this section, you will know how to run and use Acronis Disk Director, what precautions you should take, and how to perform the most common tasks you might need. In this section Precautions ..............................................................................................16 User privileges ..........................................................................................16 Running Acronis Disk Director ......................................................
2. In the disk management area, examine the current layout of disks and volumes. 3. Add one or more management operations on disks and volumes to the queue of pending operations. These operations will take effect only after you commit them. 4. In the disk management area, examine how the layout of disks and volumes will look when the pending operations are completed. 5. Commit the pending operations.
1. Menu The menu provides access to all the actions, tools and settings of Acronis Disk Director. 2. Toolbar The toolbar displays the current disk layout (p. 19) and lets you perform the following actions on pending operations: Commit (p. 20), Undo and Redo (p. 21). Disk Management view The disk management area contains the table of disks and volumes and the graphical panel. 3. Table The table lists all the disks and their volumes and lets you select any of them to perform operations.
I/O errors are found on a dynamic disk. If a disk has errors, we recommended you to repair it as soon as possible to avoid data loss. Offline A dynamic disk is accessible in read only mode (if you switched it to offline previously), or not accessible at all (corrupted or intermittently unavailable). You can make the disk that you previously switched to offline, fully accessible—see Changing a disk status: offline to online (p. 46).
To find out more information about disk statuses, please refer to the Volume status descriptions article on the Microsoft website. Important! For instructions explaining how to repair volumes with erroneous statuses, please refer to the Troubleshooting Disk Management article on the Microsoft website. 4.6 Disk layout On a machine with two or more operating systems, representation of disks and volumes depends on which operating system is currently running.
view at the top, as well as in the graphical view at the bottom. Any volume changes, including changing the volume letter or label, are also immediately displayed. While an operation is pending it can be easily undone and redone—see Undoing pending operations (p. 21). 4.7.1 Pending operations Almost all the operations are considered pending before you commit them.
can examine information about disk and volume operations, including reasons any for failures. Physically, a log is a collection of XML files stored on the machine. Operations performed using bootable media are logged as well, but the log’s lifetime is limited to a current session. Rebooting eliminates the log, but you can save the log to a file while the machine is booted with the media. To browse the Log Select View -> View log from the menu.
Save all the filtered log entries to a file 1. Set filters (p. 22) to get a list of the log entries that satisfy the filtering criteria. 2. Click Save All to File. 3. In the opened window, specify a path and a name for the file. As a result, the log entries of that list will be saved. Delete all the log entries Click Clear Log. All the log entries will be deleted from the log, and a new log entry will be created. It will contain information about who deleted the entries and when. 4.8.
4.10 How to How to create a volume that spans across several disks? Create a dynamic volume (spanned or striped) by using the Create volume (p. 25) wizard. How to increase a volume size at the expense of other volumes' unallocated space? Resize (p. 27) the volume. How to merge two volumes without losing your data? Use the Merge (p. 30) operation. How to make the existing volume fault-tolerant? Add a mirror (p. 35) to this volume.
Use the Clean up disk (p. 48) operation. 27 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
5 Volume operations This section describes all the operations that you can perform with volumes in Acronis Disk Director. Acronis Disk Director must obtain exclusive access to the target disk/volume. This means no other disk management utilities (such as the Windows Disk Management utility) can access it at that time. If you receive a message stating that the disk/volume cannot be blocked, close the disk management applications that use this disk/volume and start again.
2. Specify the type that the new volume will have. Every volume type is provided with a brief description to let you better understand the advantages and limitations of each possible volume type. To learn more about volume types—see Types of basic volumes (p. 11) and Types of dynamic volumes (p. 12). The list of volume types contains only the types that are supported (p. 13) by the current operating system. 3.
Logical. Set the volume as Logical, if it is intended for data storage. 6. Click Finish to add the pending volume creation operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.
As a result you will get additional unallocated space, which will be adjacent to the volume that you are resizing. By default, this option does not apply to the boot volumes on the disk. To include these volumes, select the Use free space on boot volumes check box. 4. Examine how the resized volume will be located on the disk or disks, by using the preview area at the bottom of the window. 5. Click OK to add the pending volume resizing operation.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.4 Moving a volume This operation moves a volume by creating a new volume, copying the original volume’s content to it, and then deleting the original volume.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Moving system, boot, and active volumes Important: Do not move any of these volumes unless you absolutely need to. If you want to transfer your system to a new hard disk, consider disk cloning instead—see Basic disk cloning (p. 41). The machine or its operating system will not always remain bootable after you move such volume.
the opposite action (merging a non-secured volume to a secured one), the main volume security settings will be assigned to the resultant volume. 5.6 Formatting a volume The formatting operation prepares a volume to store files and folders, by creating a file system on it. Caution: Formatting destroys all data that is currently stored on the volume. You may want to format a volume in the following cases: When you are creating the volume.
NTFS file system. For example, these programs may incorrectly calculate the total and available space on such volumes. 5.7 Deleting a volume This operation deletes a selected volume. The space that was occupied by the volume becomes unallocated space on the corresponding disk or disks. Caution: After you delete the volume, all data that is stored on it will be lost. Tip: Deleting a mirrored volume means deleting both of its mirrors.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.9 Changing a volume label The volume label is a short name that you can assign to a volume to better differentiate it from other volumes.
5.10 Changing a drive letter Windows operating systems assign drive letters, such as C, to volumes to locate files and folders on them. You can set up, modify, or remove the drive letter of a volume that is supported by Windows; namely, a volume whose file system is FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS. The change will affect only the Windows operating system whose disk layout is currently selected— by default, the currently running Windows operating system.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.12 Converting a logical volume to primary This operation applies to basic disks whose partitioning style is MBR. It converts a logical volume on such disk to a primary volume. Each basic MBR disk can have either up to four primary volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus an unlimited number of logical volumes.
5.14 Setting a volume active This operation applies to primary volumes on basic MBR disks. To specify the volume from which the machine will start, you need to set a volume to become active. A disk can have only one active volume, so if you set a volume as active, the volume, which was previously active, will be automatically unset. To set a volume active 1. Right-click the primary volume you want to set as active, and then click Mark as active.
5.16 Removing a mirror Mirrored volumes provide fault tolerance by storing two exact copies of data—called mirrors—on two different disks. Removing a mirror from a mirrored volume means converting that volume to a simple volume, thus losing fault tolerance. The space that was occupied by the removed mirror becomes unallocated space on the corresponding disk (provided that that disk is not missing).
2. For one of the two mirrors, specify the volume label and/or drive letter that the mirror will have when it is converted to a volume. To not assign a drive letter to the volume, click Do not assign the letter. The other mirror will be assigned the drive letter and volume label of the original mirrored volume. 3. Click OK to add the pending mirrored volume breaking operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed.
Note: If the volume is in use, the tool can only check it for errors, but cannot repair them. The checking and fixing of errors on this volume will be performed the next time you restart the system. 5.20 Defragmenting a volume This operation is enabled in Windows operating systems, and is disabled under bootable media. Defragmentation increases the system performance by consolidating fragmented files on a volume.
5.22 Changing a file system This operation lets you change the volume file systems of the following type: FAT16 to FAT32 and back Ext2 to Ext3 and back The table below describes main differences between the file systems.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.24 Unhiding a volume This operation applies to hidden volumes on basic MBR disks. Unhiding a hidden a volume means changing the volume type so that it will be visible by the operating system. You may want to unhide a volume in order to: Make a previously hidden volume again visible to the operating system.
more i-nodes there are in the file system, the less likely you will not run of i-nodes. But, the “file system check” operation will be performed slower. 3. Click OK to add the pending i-node density changing operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.
6 Disk operations This section describes all the operations that you can perform with disks using Acronis Disk Director. Acronis Disk Director must obtain exclusive access to the target disk/volume. This means no other disk management utilities (such as the Windows Disk Management utility) can access it at that time. If you receive a message stating that the disk/volume cannot be blocked, close the disk management applications that use this disk/volume and start again.
6.2 Basic disk cloning This operation is available for basic MBR disks. The cloning operation transfers all the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volumes can be cloned to the target disk “as is”, or resized automatically with respect to the target disk size. You may want to use cloning in the following cases: If you are about to replace an old hard disk with a new one without reinstalling operating systems and applications on the new disk.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Using advanced options When cloning a disk containing the system volume, you need to retain operating system bootability on the target disk volume, by copying the original disk's NT signature. The NT signature is a record that is kept in the disk’s master boot record and uniquely identifies the disk.
To convert a basic MBR disk to basic GPT 1. Right-click the basic MBR disk you want to convert to GPT, and then click Convert to GPT. An information window will pop up, stating that you are about to convert MBR to GPT. 2. Click OK to add the pending MBR to GPT disk conversion operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20).
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 6.5 Disk conversion: basic to dynamic You would want to convert a basic disk to dynamic in the following cases: If you plan to use the disk as part of a dynamic disk group If you want to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage. To convert a basic disk to dynamic 1.
To convert a dynamic disk to basic 1. Right-click the dynamic disk you need to convert, and then click Convert to basic. You will receive a final warning about the dynamic disk being converted to basic. You will be advised about the changes that will happen to the system if the chosen disk is converted from dynamic to basic.
When taking a dynamic disk whose volumes span across several disks offline, these volumes get statuses with respect to their type: Simple/Spanned/Striped volumes become Failed; Mirrored volumes become Failed Redundancy. The disk you took offline also becomes Missing. To recover Simple/Spanned/Striped volumes it is enough to take the offline disk to online (p. 46). To recover Mirrored volumes, you need to take the offline disk online, and then reactivate it.
For more information on volume statuses please refer to the following Microsoft article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771775.aspx 2. Click OK to add the pending foreign disks importing operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 6.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 20). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Note: If you accidentally cleared an MBR disk with important data, it is still possible to recover the volumes on this disk by using Acronis Recovery Expert (p. 56). But do not forget to initialize the disk and set MBR partitioning scheme first. 54 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
7 Tools This section describes Acronis Bootable Media Builder and Acronis Recovery Expert tools. After reading this section, you will have learned how to create bootable media in order to use Acronis Disk Director on bare metal or outside of an operating system, and how to recover deleted or lost volumes. In this section Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................49 Acronis Recovery Expert ....................................................................
WinPE proved to be the most convenient bootable solution in large environments with heterogeneous hardware. Advantages: Using Acronis Disk Director in Windows Preinstallation Environment provides more functionality than using Linux-based bootable media. Having booted PC-compatible hardware into WinPE, you can use not only Acronis Disk Director, but also PE commands and scripts and other plug-ins you've added to the PE.
2. 3. 4. 5. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94bb6e34-d890-4932-81a55b50c657de08&DisplayLang=en Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 (PE 3.0): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=696DD665-9F76-4177-A81139C26D3B3B34&displaylang=en [optional] Burn the WAIK to DVD or copy to a flash drive. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework v.2.0 from this kit (NETFXx86 or NETFXx64, depending on your hardware.) Install Microsoft Core XML (MSXML) 5.0 or 6.
Parameters When specifying multiple parameters, separate them with spaces. acpi=off Disables Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). You may want to use this parameter when experiencing problems with a particular hardware configuration. noapic Disables Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC). You may want to use this parameter when experiencing problems with a particular hardware configuration.
Disables the module whose name is given by module_name. For example, to disable the use of the SATA module, specify: sata_sis=off pci=bios Forces the use of PCI BIOS instead of accessing the hardware device directly. You may want to use this parameter if the machine has a non-standard PCI host bridge. pci=nobios Disables the use of PCI BIOS; only direct hardware access methods will be allowed. You may want to use this parameter when the bootable media fails to start, which may be caused by the BIOS.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Specify the path to the folder where the WinPE files are located. [optional] Specify Windows drivers to be added to Windows PE. Once you boot a machine into Windows PE, the drivers can help you access the device where the backup archive is located. Click Add and specify the path to the necessary *.inf file for a corresponding SCSI, RAID, SATA controller, network adapter, tape drive or other device.
If you do not wish to follow this procedure every time you boot from media on a given hardware configuration, re-create the bootable media with the appropriate mode number (in our example, vga=0x318) typed in the Kernel parameters window—see Linux-based bootable media (p. 51) for details. 7.1.2.2 List of commands and utilities available in Linux-based bootable media Linux-based bootable media contains the following commands and command line utilities, which you can use when running a command shell.
The Recovery Expert first attempts to recover volumes "as is", i.e. logical volumes will be recovered as logical and primary as primary respectively. If the primary volume cannot be recovered as is, it will be recovered as logical. Also, if the logical volume cannot be recovered as is, it will be recovered as primary. To run Acronis Recovery Expert Select Tools > Acronis Recovery Expert from the top menu. Recovering volumes in automatic mode The automatic mode is easy to use and requires minimal effort.
volume list. The search will, however, continue until all the remaining disks are scanned. If no volumes are found, you will be asked to close the Recovery Expert. The program can even find and display intersected volumes, that is, volumes that were created and deleted on the disk at different times. Moreover, every successive volume allocates space from the previously deleted volume, but not at the beginning of it. Only one of the intersected volumes can be recovered.
8 Acronis OS Selector Acronis OS Selector is a powerful, reliable and easy-to-use boot manager that allows several operating systems on a single machine and lets you create different configurations for any installed operating system, including Windows 7.
Operations This section includes actions available for selected operating systems or their shortcuts — see Using shortcuts (p. 64).
8.1.3.1 Booting operating systems You can boot any operating system with Acronis OS Selector: From the boot menu (if activated) From under Windows from the Acronis OS Selector main window Booting an OS using the boot menu Having turned on the machine, wait for the Acronis OS Selector boot menu to be invoked and select and double-click an operating system to boot.
Click Set Password in the Operations section of the main window sidebar Enter and confirm a password in the Set Operating System Password dialog and click OK. An operating system password must be at least six characters long. You can also set an operating system password by clicking Set Password on the toolbar, in the OS section of the main menu, or in the context menu, invoked by a right-click. 8.1.3.
Changing the disk order for an operation system already installed may prevent that system from loading. Folders Acronis OS Selector automatically determines system folders for all Windows operating systems. System folders contain files required for an operating system to work properly. Windows 2000/XP utilizes Windows, Program Files, and Documents and Settings folders, while Windows 7 uses Program Data, Users, and other folders.
8.1.4 Editing operating systems This section provides the means of operating system and shortcut management. 8.1.4.1 Hiding operating systems If needed, you can hide any operating system installed so it will not be shown in the boot menu and Operating systems section of the OS Selector main window. To hide an operating system 1. Select an operating system. 2. Click Hide in the Edit sidebar section, on the toolbar, or in the Edit section of the main menu.
8.1.4.5 Copying operating systems Acronis OS Selector allows you to duplicate any installed operating system or its shortcut. It might be useful if you want to test unknown software before installing it on the main OS. Copying an operating system implies duplicating all its system files and folders and configuration files, as well as all programs installed, into a separate folder located inside the hidden BOOTWIZ system folder — see Acronis OS Selector installation (p. 8).
8.1.6 Setting Acronis OS Selector options You can set Acronis OS Selector options by clicking Options in the Tools sidebar section or selecting a respective item on the Toolbar or main menu. 8.1.6.1 General options Acronis OS Selector is able to protect system folders automatically when a new operating system is detected.
Administrator password – required when a user tries to change any options and settings of Acronis OS Selector and operating systems To disable global passwords, leave both input fields blank. When the default operating system is booted without invoking the boot menu, you might have to enter the boot menu password running Acronis OS Selector under Windows. 8.1.6.5 Input devices In this section of Acronis OS Selector options, you can provide extended support of input devices (mouse, etc.
8.1.7.1 Reactivating the Acronis OS Selector boot menu Because operating systems can change the Master Boot Record (MBR) during installation, Acronis OS Selector, which also uses the MBR, might become inoperable. If this happens, you will not have to reinstall Acronis OS Selector, but to reactivate it by selecting Activate OS Selector from the Tools menu of Acronis OS Selector. Besides, automatic reactivation is provided for Windows 98 operating system. To do this, Acronis OS Selector adds a REINSTAL.
2. Set the prepared volume active for the new operating system — see Setting a volume active (p. 35). When installing a new operating system from CD/DVD, select the CD item in the Operating systems area of the Acronis OS Selector main window. When installing a new operating system from floppy disks, create a new Boot from floppy item by selecting OS -> New -> Boot from floppy in the Menu.
By setting the target disk to be the first, you will force the boot part of Windows to be installed on that disk so that the new operating system can boot, even if the first disk is damaged or has been removed. However, you may choose not to do it. The new operating system will then boot from the first disk, in spite of its system folders residing on another disk.
however, not all of them are willing to change operating systems completely or have a second machine on which to install Linux. The preferred option is to run Windows and Linux on a single machine. Linux peculiarities From the perspective of bootup, Linux, like Windows, has two parts: A loader that loads the Linux core into memory and passes it the controls The main part of the operating system The most popular Linux loaders are LILO and GRUB.
8.2 Acronis Disk Editor Acronis Disk Editor is a professional tool that performs a variety of actions on a hard disk: with it, you can restore boot records, repair files and folder structure, find lost clusters, remove computer virus code from a disk and much more. This program has much to offer to a computer novice as well. For example, it can be used as an educational tool.
Help – lets you get help concerning the editor window, the program’s manufacturer and version. Using controls While all the operations can be accessed from the menu, the most frequently used operations are available on the toolbar. You can access almost all of the program's main functions (or menu items) with the help of F1, F2,… F10 keyboard shortcuts and combinations like Ctrl+O, Ctrl+F, Alt+P, etc.
If you do not save your changes, you effectively reject them. If you have made changes in a hard disk sector and decide to exit the editor without saving them, you will see a warning prompting you to save your changes. Writing a block from a file The Write to file menu item lets you to save the selected block to a file. It is a good practice to save the selected blocks before you begin to edit them. This will help you to revert changes made to the given hard disk sectors and to restore the data.
8.2.5 Search The Search menu lets you search a disk for a line and to go to a disk sector according to its absolute offset. A search line can be set both as char and as numeric (hexadecimal) values. During a search, you can ignore letter case as well as search for a given line at a given offset inside the sector. The disk data is interpreted according to the encoding selected. If you selected a search mode without a matching case letter, both the case and elements above the characters will be ignored.
3. Place the cursor at the very beginning of the first sector byte (Absolute sector 0, or 0000 in Hex). Then, hold down the Shift key and use the arrow keys to select the first 445 bytes of the sector. This will select the MBR code and disk signature. Tip. The exact cursor position is displayed in the Position field on the status bar (in the bottomright corner of the window). 4. Select the Write to file item in the Edit menu. 5. In the Write to file window, click Browse and specify the path and file name.
10. Place the cursor at the very beginning of the first sector byte (Absolute sector 0, or 0000 in Hex), and then click Read from file. 11. In the Read from file window, click Browse and specify the file storing the MBR code. 12. Click OK. The file content will be inserted into a sector from the current cursor position. 13. Press the Ctrl+S key combination to save changes. 14. Reboot the machine. 8.2.6.3 Wiping disk data Hard disks can contain a substantial amount of confidential information.
To restore files 1. In a file manager that supports Hex, open an existing .jpeg file similar to the deleted file. Our goal is to find some information that can be used to distinguish these .jpeg files among the other data stored on the volume. Lets open a similar .jpeg image that was taken with the same camera in Hex mode with the Western (Windows) encoding. As we can see in character area, this .jpeg file begins with something like: ...JFIF....H.H... and ends with something like: ...OLF... 2. 3. 4. 5.
9 Glossary A Active volume The volume from which a machine starts. If no operating systems other than Windows are installed on your machine, the active volume is typically the same as the system volume (p. 91). If an operating system other than Windows, such as Linux, is installed on your machine, the active volume can be the volume where the program known as a boot loader, such as GRUB, is stored. The active volume is either a primary volume (p. 90) (on a basic disk) or a simple volume (p.
Block See Sector (p. 90). Boot sector The first sector (p. 90) of a disk (p. 83) or a volume (p. 92) that contains the initial code to start the operating system. The boot sector must end with a hexadecimal signature of 0xAA55. Boot volume The volume which contains files that are necessary for a particular Windows operating system to start and work. If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, the boot volume is usually the same as the system volume (p. 91).
C Cluster The unit of disk space allocation to store files in a file system. Each non-empty file completely occupies one or more clusters. The typical size of a cluster is 4 KB. When formatting a volume, you can choose the cluster size for it. Smaller cluster sizes allow for more efficient storage of smaller files by reducing the amount of wasted disk space; but larger files may become more fragmented across the volume, which may increase the amount of time that is needed to access them.
group is discontinued, though its name is kept in the above registry key. In case a dynamic disk is created or connected again, a disk group with an incremental name is created. When moved to another machine, a disk group is considered as foreign (p. 86) and cannot be used until imported into the existing disk group. The import updates the configuration data on both the local and the foreign disks so that they form a single entity.
LDM Metadata partition 1 MB A dynamic MBR disk (Disk 1) and a dynamic GPT disk (Disk 2). For more information about dynamic disks please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles: Disk Management (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit) http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/bb457110.aspx 816307 Best practices for using dynamic disks on Windows Server 2003-based computers http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816307 Dynamic volume A volume on one or more dynamic disks.
A file system tracks free and occupied space, supports folders (p. 86) and file names, and stores the physical positions of files on a disk. Examples of file systems that are supported in Windows are FAT16 (also known simply as FAT), FAT32, and NTFS. Examples of file systems that are supported in Linux are ext2 and ext3. When formatting (p. 86) a volume, you can choose a file system for it. Folder A named container for files that are stored on a volume.
G GPT disk A disk whose partitioning scheme (p. 89) is GUID partition table (GPT). GPT disks are typically used by 64-bit operating systems, such as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. See also MBR disk (p. 88). GUID partition table (GPT) One of the two partitioning schemes of a disk. See in Partitioning scheme (p. 89). H Hard disk A fixed storage media along with integrated electronics that consists of several magnetic platters that rotate synchronously on one spindle.
Logical volumes usually store user data and sometimes the files that are used by the installed operating systems. Unlike the number of primary volumes, the number of logical volumes on the disk is unlimited. A logical volume is also called a logical drive. M Machine A physical or virtual computer uniquely identified by an operating system installation. Main volume Of two volumes being merged, the volume on which the other volume’s files and folders will be placed.
Mirrored volume A fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks (p. 90). Each of the two parts of a mirrored volume is called a mirror. All of the data on one disk is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the hard disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining hard disks. Volumes that can be mirrored include the system volume (p. 91) and a boot volume (p. 82). A mirrored volume is sometimes called a RAID-1 volume.
Physical disk A disk (p. 83) that is physically a separate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are physical disks. Primary partition See Primary volume (p. 90). Primary volume A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 81) and works as if it were on a separate hard disk. Primary volumes often store files that are necessary to start the machine or an operating system. Many operating systems can start only from a primary volume.
Spanned volume A volume that consists of disk space from two or more dynamic disks (p. 84), in portions that do not need to be equally-sized. A spanned volume can reside on up to 32 disks. Unlike mirrored (p. 88) and RAID-5 volumes, spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant. Unlike striped volumes (p. 91), spanned volumes do not provide faster data access. Stripe Each of the several equally-sized portions of disk space that make up a striped volume (p. 91) or a RAID-5 volume.
If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, the system volume is usually the same as the boot volume (p. 82). If more than one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, each of these operating systems normally has its own boot volume, whereas there is still only one system volume. In terms of volume type, the system volume can be a primary volume on a basic disk, or a simple volume on a dynamic disk. See also boot volume (p. 82).
A volume letter is usually assigned when you format the volume. It can be assigned, changed, or removed later without affecting the volume’s data. A volume letter is also called a drive letter. Volume type The type of volume, which is determined by the volume structure and by the type of disk on which the volume resides. The following is the list of volume types with short descriptions: 96 Basic volume (p. 81): A volume on a basic disk. Can be one of the following types: Primary volume (p.
