User's Guide DiskEditor 6.0 Compute with confidence www.acronis.
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Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 1. INSTALLING ACRONIS DISKEDITOR AND GETTING STARTED . 6 1.1 ACRONIS DISKEDITOR SYSTEM PACKAGE ...................................... 6 1.2 INSTALLATION ................................................................................. 6 1.3 REPAIRING/UPGRADING ACRONIS DISKEDITOR ............................. 7 1.4 REMOVING THE SOFTWARE .................................
Introduction Hard Disk A hard disk is a very effective device for storing information. Modern hard disks feature huge volumes of stored information, very high recording densities, and very high access speed to retrieve stored information. A hard disk is usually an extremely reliable device. One of its parameters – non-failure operating time – may reach 20,000 to 500,000 hours. This does not mean, however, that storing information on hard disks is 100% error-free.
It is impossible to offer complete information on organizing data storage on a hard disk and on its interacting with operating system and applications in such a short Guide. Thus we will inform you only about the most vital data below skipping many complex technical details of information storage and the internal construction of a hard disk. The general outline will be on the capabilities of Acronis DiskEditor program.
Chapter 1. Installing Acronis DiskEditor and Getting Started 1.1 Acronis DiskEditor System Package Acronis DiskEditor system package includes: • An installation CD, • This guide, • License agreement, • Registration card, • Advertising materials. 1.2 Installation To install the Acronis DiskEditor: 1. Insert the Acronis DiskEditor installation CD into CD-ROM drive and start the installation procedure. 2. Carefully follow the installation program instructions on the screen. 3.
After installation of Acronis DiskEditor is completed, you should restart your computer. 1.3 Repairing/Upgrading Acronis DiskEditor In order to upgrade or repair your software, start the Acronis DiskEditor installation program again. It will determine that DiskEditor was already installed on your computer and will ask you if you want to restore (update) the program or completely remove it from disk. 1.
Chapter 2. Working with Acronis DiskEditor 2.1 Partition or Disk Selection Working with the Acronis DiskEditor program begins with the Open dialog window that users see after clicking the Acronis DiskEditor line in the program group of Programs desktop start menu. The window of partition or disk selection By default the program automatically marks the first hard disk for working. But you may select any other disk or individual partition – click the left mouse button on a corresponding rectangle.
2.2 Main Window of the Program The main window shows numbers of disk and sector where internal program cursor is positioned usually contains information and the work of various modes. Below the main window of the program is the view as Partition table mode. The main window in the view as Partition table mode To make the information contained in this field sensible, the current sector should be the MBR or the extended Partition table.
The next figure shows the Partition table as a single dump (hexadecimal byte values are on the left, and the corresponding characters are on the right). The main window in the view as Hex mode The current editing position is shown by the cursor that can be either in the left, or right part of the window In this section of the Guide all examples of DiskEditor’s main window view modes are given for demonstration purposes.
2.3 Working in Multi-Windows Mode The disk editor features multiple windows: from Disk menu of DiskEditor you can open several main windows, each of them showing various hard disk sectors. Disk menu You can switch between various Acronis DiskEditor windows with the help of the mouse, clicking the necessary window, or consistently advancing windows with the help of Alt+Tab key combination.
Selecting Properties item in Disk menu allows you to get access to the window with main properties of the computer hard disk selected for working (or of selected partition of the given disk).
2.4 Edit Hard Disks Edit menu of DiskEditor’s main window allows you to access the main operations with blocks of given hard disk sectors. You can edit hard disk data directly in the fields of any view mode (see the View menu). You can operate with data blocks using Edit menu in the view as Hex mode. Edit menu Any view mode allows you to select blocks with the help of the mouse by clicking and holding its left button, or with the help of the keyboard advancing the window with Shift key pressed.
If you have made changes in a hard disk sector and decided to exit the editor without saving them, you will see a warning about saving your changes. Saving modified sector 2.5 Write Block to a File and Read from a File Write to file… and Read from file… menu items allows you to save the selected block to a file or to read the block from a file and save it to a disk sector. The selection of Write to file… item results in opening the Write to file window (the saved block should be preliminary selected).
Write to a file To read a block from a file, and insert it into a disk sector, you must place the cursor on the necessary sector byte and then select Read from file… menu item. The selection of this menu item will result in opening the Read from file window. In this window enter the file name and its path or locate a file by clicking the Browse… button. To insert file contents to sector from the current cursor position (or considering offset in the file) click the OK button.
2.6 View Information in the Acronis DiskEditor window can be viewed and edited in several different modes. You can select the appropriate view mode with the help of View menu. View menu The editor offers 7 view modes: • As Hex, • As Partition table, • As FAT16 bootsector, • As FAT32 bootsector, • As FAT32 FS info sector, • As NTFS bootsector, • As FAT folder. The Chapter 3 «Main Window View Modes» is entirely devoted to features of view modes. 2.
Selecting Search item in the same menu will give you access to functions of searching lines in the disk being edited. (You can do the same by pressing Ctrl+F key combination.) Search parameters can be set in the Search dialog window. The Search dialog window A search line can be set both as char, and numeric (hexadecimal) value. During a search you can ignore letter case, as well as search for a given line at a given offset inside the sector.
The transition is performed by entering absolute sector offset, or cylinder, head, and sector numbers. The listed parameters are bound by this expression: (CYL x HDS + HD) x SPT + SEC – 1, Where CYL, HD, SEC are numbers of cylinder, head, sector in the CHS coordinates (Cylinder – Head – Sector); HDS is the number of heads per disk, SPT is the number of heads per track. You can return to sector from another one by selecting the Back item in the Search menu (or by pressing Ctrl+Backspace key combination). 2.
Chapter 3. Main Window View Modes A hard disk of 1.79 Gb capacity is used as an example of how DiskEditor displays information. All disk partitions were removed and the disk was completely cleared of any information with the help of Acronis DriveCleanser which zeroed all hard disk sector bytes. This is done to demonstrate how data storage structures are created on a hard disk by standard means – for example MS Windows (or MS DOS) operating system using FDISK and/or the FORMAT utility. 3.
• End partition head, • End partition sector, • Number of hard disk sectors allocated for partition. Hard disk partitions are described in the Partition table in two ways simultaneously: (1) in CHS co-ordinates (Cylinder – Head – Sector; limited and obsolete variant) – coordinates of initial and end partition sectors, and (2) partition heading and its length in sectors. Each record of the Partition table contains a partition boot patch flag indicating to the main loader what partition to boot.
The creation of a hard disk primary partition will immediately update the Partition table. Primary partition Creating 1000 Mb primary partition on the disk results in filling the 1st line of the Partition table. You can see partition parameters on the figure. Partition contains 2048193 sectors total and is of FAT32 type (or 0Bh in hex). Please note that Enter button to the left of Partition type field is enabled; clicking it you can quickly proceed to partition specified by the Partition table record.
To work with a hard disk you must know where and what data is stored on it. As a complete disk editing program, DiskEditor allows you to create a complete partition on a disk without the use of the FDISK utility (or any other utilities). DiskEditor is also capable of much more: while the FDISK utility allows you to create only FAT16/32 partitions, DiskEditor allows you to create partitions for almost any types known. Look closely at the Partition type dropdown list.
Or to use Disk Æ Open menu to select a partition in the Open dialog window (a partition, not a disk) which bootsector you need. In this case DiskEditor will position on the 1st sector of that partition – its bootsector. If you are in the view as Partition table mode, you can find a bootsector of any partition simply clicking Enter button to the left of partition record.
• Root folder item, Total sectors, FAT16 size – fields used by FAT16 file system; • Media ID – Media (disk) identifier; • Sectors per track – the number of sectors per track; • Number of heads – the number of heads; • Big total sectors – the number of disk sectors available to partition file system (for partitions > 32 Mb); • FAT size – the size of File Allocation Table in disk sectors; • Active FAT – four low bits of this field contain the number of active FAT copy used for reading and writing if copy d
3.4 Creating a Logical Partition Creation of logical partition results in filling the second line of the Partition table. Logical partition The partition is marked Extended LBA or 0Fh in hex. Externally it is characterized by the same parameters, as the Primary disk partition, but its organization and purpose differ. The primary partition contains a single logical disk. Extended DOS/Windows partition allows you to organize any number of logical disks.
While MBR Partition table (of a physical disk) can address to 4 partitions at once, the Extended Partition Record addresses to a chain of partitions that ends with a partition, which the second record of EPR does not address. Please note that the Extended Partition Record addresses not from the beginning of a physical hard disk (MBR sector), but from the beginning of the Extended partition (EPR sector). The chain of extended records is continuous and non-branching.
To read a file it is necessary to find its record in a folder by its name and to read the number of the 1st file cluster. The first cluster represents the beginning of a file. Then it is necessary to read a FAT element corresponding to the first cluster of a file. If this element contains a «last in chain» label, there’s no need to continue searching: this file is simply located in a single cluster. If a cluster is not the last, it contains the number of the next cluster.
Now run DiskEditor and mouse-click the partition in the partition selection window. Selecting the partition DiskEditor will automatically position on the bootsector of this partition and the main window will open in the view as FAT32 bootsector mode by default. A bootsector of the logical partition is the sector with 2048319 absolute offset (your values may be different). The File Allocation Table of the logical partition has is 1255 sectors long.
The root folder 3.5.3 Files with Short Names As discussed, a file name and other attributes are registered in a folder record. A folder record has the following structure, or main bytes of a folder record indicate the following values: Offset Length Purpose bytes bytes 0 8 File name up to 8 symbols. 8 3 File extension (type) up to 3 symbols.
Bit 9-15 – year from 1980 ( 0-119 ). 1Ah 2 Primary cluster number. 1С 4 File size in bytes. The figure above shows values already interpreted by the DiskEditor program, these fields have the following values: Name File name. Ext/Prefix File name extension or a number of a long name fragment. A, D, V, S, H, R Represent Archive, Directory Entry Volume System, Hidden, Read-Only file attributes. Size/Crc Valid File size or a long name checksum. Cluster Number of the first file cluster.
0Bh 1 File attributes (always 0Fh). 0Ch 1 Reserved. 0Dh 1 Check code (calculated from short name). 0Eh 12 Name (continued). 1A 2 Number of the first cluster (0) 1Ch 4 Name (continued). The above scheme can be viewed in Acronis DiskEditor program in the view as FAT folder mode. As you can see above, test.txt corresponds to two folder elements. The lower line indicating Short Name value in the drop-down list on the left and the uppercase name (TEST.
