Reynolds Utilities Instruction Manual Copyright 1994, Reynolds Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved. IBM and AT are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language or computer language, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of Reynolds Marketing, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. 2/94 License Agreement Reynolds Marketing Inc. makes no representations or warranties with respect to the contents hereof and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, Reynolds Marketing Inc. reserves the right to revise this software, and to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of Reynolds Marketing Inc. to notify any person of such revisions or changes. This program is provided as-is without any warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you, the user. Reynolds Marketing Inc. will in no event be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits or savings arising out of the use or inability to use this software. Reynolds Marketing, Inc. 2130 Mountain View Avenue, Suite 5A Longmont, Colorado 80501 U.S.A. 1-800-22DRIVE Table of Contents Welcome Navigation Keys 5 What is a Hard Drive? 6 Physical vs. Logical Drives 7 Getting Started 8 Overview System 9 Prevention 9 Recovery 9 Analysis 9 Automatic 9 System Tools Configuration 11 Directory 11 Execute 11 OS Shell 12 Quit 12 About 12 Prevention Tools Disk Test 13 Mirror 14 Save Root 15 Save MPH 15 Save Boot 16 Recovery Tools Load Mirror Data 17 Restore MPH 19 Restore Boot 19 Sector Viewer 20 Disk Copy 22 Track Copy 23 Boot Information 24 Analysis Tools Read Tests 26 Write Tests 27 Seek Tests 27 Loop on Sector 28 Write/Read Compare 28 Partition Information 29 Recalibrate 29 Reset 29 Test Drive Ready 29 Automatic Tools Backup 31 Repair 31 [Welcome] Reynolds Marketing would like to thank you for purchasing our product. We feel that this software package can alleviate some of the fear of loosing your valuable data. Reynolds Utilities are a collection of tools designed to prevent the loss of valuable data on your hard drive. In the event that your hard drive data becomes corrupted, excluding a catastrophic drive failure, you will be able to recover from common DOS problems. Most data corruption manifests itself in the form of damage to one or more of the following areas of your hard drive: o Partition Table o File Allocation Table o Root Directory o Data Area Conventional drive backups are a timely and costly process, due to the price of the disks or tapes needed to backup all of the data files. Reynolds Utilities was developed to be a quick and cost effective method to insure data integrity. By backing-up only the areas of the drive prone to corruption, you create for yourself a form of insurance policy for your data. This software is not meant to be a replacement for conventional data backups, but a companion to it, alleviating the need to perform backups as often. [Navigation Keys] When navigating through pull-down menu items, you may press the F1 function key to get context sensitive help information at any time. When making selections at input screens, use the Left and Right Arrow keys to make your selections. Hot Keys are color coded red. If you have a mouse, you can select a menu item by clicking on it. [What is a Hard Drive?] A hard drive is an electromechanical device used for the mass storage of data (i.e. programs, word processing and database files). Data is written onto rigid platters in concentric circles called tracks. Every platter has two or more surfaces depending on the number of platters in the drive. The tracks on the top surface have an identically corresponding set of tracks directly underneath; and this follows for every platter in the drive. Track zero is the outer most track on the platter. There is a corresponding track zero on the underside of this platter and another on the top of the next, and so on. All of the track zeros line up into a stack called a cylinder. There will be a number of cylinders based on the number of tracks per surface. For every surface there is a corresponding read/write head that magnetically reads and writes the data on the disk. Tracks are divided into evenly spaced units called sectors. The read/write head positions itself, seeks over the data field of the sector and either reads the data field or writes to it depending on the operation. Each sector on the track holds 512 bytes of data. You can calculate the capacity of the drive by using the following formula to establish the physical drive configuration: Capacity = Cylinders x Heads x Sectors/Track x 512 bytes. [Physical vs. Logical Drives] Reynolds Utilities performs actions on your drive in one of two ways, to the Physical drive and the Logical drive. The physical drive refers to the hard disk as a whole, in the form of cylinder, head and sector accesses, from the very first physical sector on the drive to the very last. Most users divide the drive up into multiple partitions, or logical drives. If you have only one partition, the entire drive is logical drive C:, but if you divide the drive in half creating two partitions, you will have logical drive C: and logical drive D:. All accesses to logical drives are done in absolute sector accesses, zero being the first and then being numbered sequentially to the end of the partition. In some cases you may want to only test, save or restore data to a single logical drive or you may want to perform an operation to the entire physical drive. It is imperative that you understand whether the operation is logical or physical, so that you know whether the whole drive is involved or only a portion of the drive. [Getting Started] To install Reynolds Utilities on your hard drive, type: C: MD RUTILS CD RUTILS COPY A:\*.* Reynolds Utilities is now installed on your hard drive. To begin the program, type the following information at the DOS prompt: RUTILS.EXE If you are using the keyboard, press the Right and Left arrow keys to highlight a menu item and press to select it. You can also press the first letter of each menu item to quickly select an item. If you are using a mouse, click the left mouse button on a menu item to select it. The first time you run Reynolds Utilities, your drive will be identified and the configuration written to the disk in a file called RUTILS.CFG. This file needs to be in the start-up directory each time the program is executed. [Overview] The menu bar consists of five categories of tools, as shown in Figure 1. When you select one, a pull-down menu drops down, offering additional choices related to that tool. System The system menu choice provides tools for communicating with DOS while in Reynolds Utilities. You can check the drive configuration, search for files, execute a DOS command or shell-out to DOS without leaving Reynolds Utilities. Selecting About displays Reynolds Utilities, including its version number. Prevention Prevention tools are used to backup critical areas of the drive prone to corruption. Recovery This tool is used to restore those critical areas when damage has been done to your drive. Analysis The Analysis tool is used to test the integrity of your drive should you become suspicious of its operation. Automatic This is a quick and easy way to backup or restore all critical areas of the drive, instead of doing them individually. These topics will be defined in the chapters that follow. [System Tools] Configuration This is used by Reynolds Utilities to identify your drives physical geometry. Drive C:, or drive 0, is the first physical drive in the system. Drive D:, or drive 1, is the second physical drive in the system, if installed. Reynolds Utilities uses this configuration for all accesses to the drive. All drive copies or tests are performed using this geometry. It must be kept accurate, or only a portion of the drive will be accessed. Directory Directory is used to do a quick directory of the drive without leaving Reynolds Utilities. At the Directory window, input the file specification to search for. Wild cards may be used. Execute You can execute any DOS command without leaving Reynolds Utilities. At the Execute window, enter the DOS command you wish to execute. The program will shell-out to DOS. When you are finished, type exit to return to Reynolds Utilities. OS Shell Selecting the OS Shell will shell-out to DOS. When you want to return to Reynolds Utilities, type exit. Quit Quit will return you back to the opening screen. Press the down arrow key to exit, and press to return to the DOS prompt. About The About box is used to identify which version of Reynolds Utilities you are currently running. Reynolds Utilities is a constantly evolving product, and when calling for technical support, you will need to tell us which version you are running. [Prevention Tools] Disk Test The Disk Test feature is included within the prevention selection so that logical drives can be quickly tested. The test is intended to insure the drive is in good working order before performing other prevention selections. If the operating system incurs a problem with the drive, it may perform several retries without telling you. If the problem is a read error due to a marginal sector or address mark, you may not want to use the area with the problem. The information or data stored in this location may be unreadable or corrupted. Unfortunately you will not be aware that a problem exists until it's too late. The only way to insure your drive has not developed a problem area is to perform a quick Disk Test. When Disk Test is selected, you are testing every sector in the selected logical drive or partition. To perform the test, select the Disk Test menu item. The selection will prompt: Logical Drive to Test? simply press the right or left arrow key to make your drive selection and press . The display will be updated so that you can monitor the test progress. All errors will be written to a file called DISKTEST.LOG, allowing you to record the failure history of your drive. Mirror The Mirror selection is designed to save system and file allocation information for logical drives. The File Allocation Table or FAT is a record of where files are written on the drive. Files are located by following this record. DOS may write a large file in one area or in many areas, wherever there is free space. The FAT keeps track of thousands of file locations in records called clusters. Problems with this record structure can prevent you from accessing or locating previously saved files. A typical symptom of a corrupted FAT is the computer may not start up or boot correctly because DOS must locate COMMAND.COM and other important files needed to boot the system. Some computer viruses will attempt to destroy information on a drive. They do this by typically targeting the FAT and Root Directory areas in an effort to change or erase the record of where your files are saved. When you perform the Mirror selection, you create a copy of the FAT so if the records are corrupted or destroyed you can restore the copy. We recommend performing the Mirror selection after movement or changes in files. Many times, files are read but not changed. DOS reserves space for files when they are written the first time. For this reason, Mirror does not need to be performed unless there are new additions to the FAT. Keep in mind that the Mirror keeps a copy of your FAT; and when restored, the table will only reflect the records located in the copy. Obviously, keeping it current can provide you with a great deal of protection from common problems with DOS and computer viruses. The reason this feature is different from other Mirror programs is that in the Recovery selection you can Load Mirror information from your hard drive. The Utility program performs a search of your hard drive to locate the information rather than rely on the DOS record structure. The Mirror, Save Root and Save MPH are performed when the Automatic Backup is selected. This selection will automatically save the files to the Reynolds Master working disk. NOTE Additional information regarding the recovery of this file is contained in the Recovery - Load Mirror section of this manual. Save Root The Save Root selection saves a copy of the Root Directory. Used in conjunction with the Mirror feature, all file names and all sub directories will match the mirror information. The Root Directory keeps a record of where sub directories are located as well as file names and information pertaining to each file. Computer viruses that attack the FAT will generally erase the Root Directory as well. The Automatic Backup selection will Mirror, Save Root and Save MPH to the Reynolds Utilities Master working disk. Refer to the Automatic selection in this manual for additional information. Save MPH The Save MPH selection saves a copy of the Master Partition Header. The Partition Header contains the partition information for your hard drive. After saving this once, you only need to repeat it if you change the partition or add additional hard drives. The reason for saving a copy is the partition information can be destroyed or corrupted very much like the FAT and root directories. If this happens, the most common problems you may incur are no partitions defined or invalid drive specified. Both errors are easily repaired by performing the Recovery - Restore MPH selection. Refer to the Recovery selection in this manual for additional information. Save Boot This selection will save the boot sector information. The boot record stores information pertaining to the formatted hard drive. DOS uses the information when determining what type of device is installed. The boot sector information is saved to a file called BOOTREC. [Recovery Tools] Load Mirror Data This selection will search the hard drive for saved Mirror information. After the Mirror is located, you can write the mirror to a file or to the hard drive. If you're not sure if you want to write to the drive, simply choose the Write to File selection. You can write it to the drive later. When Load Mirror is selected you will be prompted for the following information Source drive where mirror resides? Press the left or right arrow key to make your selection, then press . Select the physical drive (C: for drive 0 or D: for drive 1), where the Mirror file is located. Load Mirror for Drive? Press the left or right arrow key to make your selection, then press . Type the logical drive letter for the mirror you wish to restore. Press to continue. Is this information correct? Press the left or right arrow key to make your selection, then press . If you select NO, you will return to the previous fields to change source drive or mirror to load. If you press YES, the search will begin. At this point, you can escape by pressing the [ESC] key. The search will scan the entire disk; therefore, it may take time to successfully locate the appropriate information. When the mirror information is located, you will be prompted to select one of the following options: Write to File, Write to Disk or Quit. WARNING! The Write to Disk and Write to File operations will overwrite data on your hard drive. Verify your data and backup before proceeding. Write to Disk The Write to Disk selection writes the Mirror information to your hard drive. This feature writes to the reserved area DOS uses for the FAT. Write to File This selection writes the Mirror information to the Reynolds Master working disk in a file called Newmiror.? The file extension will be a logical drive letter such as C:, D:, etc. This allows you to save the file without having to perform the search again if you do not have sufficient time to finish the data recovery process. Restore MPH This feature restores the previously saved file called MPHDRV.? The extension will be the physical drive the file belongs to; the reserved area where this data is normally located. When this feature is selected, enter the physical drive you plan to restore. You will receive an "Are you sure?" prompt. Select "yes" before continuing. The Restore MPH feature can be helpful when your computer incurs boot-up problems and does not recognize its hard drive. Typical error messages include "Invalid Drive Specified" or "No System." The area where this data is stored is not normally accessible, so now you have another helpful tool to solve DOS problems. WARNING! The Restore MPH operation will overwrite data on your hard drive. Verify your data backup before proceeding. Restore Boot Use this tool to restore boot sector information that is saved with the Save Boot tool. The most frequent error you may encounter when there is a boot sector problem is "Invalid Media Description Byte." This error can usually be corrected by restoring the boot sector. WARNING! The Restore Boot operation will overwrite data on your hard drive. Verify your data backup before proceeding. Sector Viewer The Sector Viewer tool allows you to view the data stored on your drive. It operates in an absolute read mode that allows you to view the areas of your hard drive that are normally reserved for DOS. The Boot Sector, File Allocation Table and Root Directory information is readable when traversing though your hard drive. When you select a valid sector, the first 256 bytes will be displayed. To view the second 256 bytes, press the key. The key allows you to return to the first 256 bytes. If you want to browse though many sectors, press the and keys at the same time, or the and keys to reverse directions. This allows a faster inspection of sectors when searching for a specific area. The Hot Key identifiers are near the bottom border and the Drive and Sector Number identifiers are located near the top. When interpreting the data, the hexadecimal values are on the left side of the screen and the ASCII values are on the right. In the HEX window, the byte that is in column 00, row 000 is the hexadecimal equivalent of the alpha/numeric character in the ASCII window at column 0, row 000. If the character is unprintable, meaning a character above ASCII value 127, the character is represented as a period (.) instead of the actual character. Disk Copy The Disk Copy tool will create an exact duplicate of the hard drive or an absolute copy. For this reason, the Source drive and the Destination drive need to be configured the same. Reynolds Utilities does not perform any buffering of the data being copied. The two hard drives do not need to be physically the same, but logically the same. If the drive types in the CMOS setup tables are the same, then you can quickly create exact duplicates of the original. NOTE Make sure the Select-Configuration has been updated to reflect both hard drives. The Starting and Ending Cylinder fields are selectable. When it's not necessary to copy the entire hard drive, you can easily select a variable number of cylinders to copy. This feature can be used to recover data from drives when you do not wish to alter the original drive containing data. By creating a copy, the repair and manipulation of files is performed on a drive that has been proven to be fully functional. The Disk Copy feature can also be used to create copies of hard drives to be used as backup data. Technology today for tape backups remains much slower than hard drive transfers, leading to less frequent data backups by computer operators. With the Disk Copy feature, the entire hard drive can be copied to a second hard drive in just minutes. The copy is performed by absolute sector copies. So when the second hard drive is configured as the only hard drive, it will contain all of the information required to successfully boot-up. The Disk Copy feature can also be used to copy data rather than performing software installations over and over when the final configuration of computers is typically loaded with the same software programs. Track Copy Similar to Disk Copy, Track Copy performs absolute copies and is very useful when hard drives may not be reliable. The Track Copy function is the easiest and fastest way to backup data files. It allows disk-to-disk copies even when the system doesn't boot from the hard drive. The track copier is much faster than Disk Copy because larger amounts of data can be transferred. Boot Information This tool reads drive information that may be necessary in the successful recovery of lost data. It shows the heads and sectors as well as other useful statistics pertaining to the hard drive selected. [Analysis Tools] The Analysis menu provides several hard disk diagnostic routines to insure that your disk is in good working condition. The test routines have been designed to be fast and easy to use. Tests are performed sequentially or randomly. The sequential test starts at sector zero and proceeds in a linear fashion to the last sector on the drive. Random tests work the drive much harder, because of the many long seeks involved. If you have an intermittent drive problem, it is likely it will exhibit itself under the random test. Read Tests The Read Test selection performs read tests of every sector on the drive, allowing you to identify grown or new defects. Use the arrow keys to select the available options. Any errors that are incurred are displayed in the "Display Error Log" window below the test progress window The results are not saved unless the output device selected is set to File. If so, all test results are saved to a file when the test is completed. Write Tests The Write Test is used to identify new defects on the platters, or to test the drive's write functionality. The same test options that are available in the Read tests are available here (see Read Tests). WARNING! The Write Test operation will destroy all data on your hard drive. Verify your data backup before proceeding. Seek Tests The Seek Test is used to test the drives ability to correctly position the read/write head(s) over a desired cylinder. The same test options available in the Read tests are available here (see Read Tests). Loop on Sector This feature allows you to loop on any given sector when analyzing sectors with test equipment. Loop on Sector will continue its operation until you strike any key, then it terminates. WARNING! Write/Read Compare will destroy all data on your hard drive. Verify your data backup before proceeding. Write/Read Compare This feature performs write/read compare tests to insure the hard drive is in good working condition. Partition Information This tool reads drive information that may be necessary to the successful recovery of lost data. It shows cluster sizes and other helpful statistics about the hard drive. Recalibrate The Recalibrate tool performs a BIOS disk command to test the recalibrate disk command. Reset The Reset tool performs a BIOS disk command to perform a disk reset. Test Drive Ready This tool performs a BIOS disk command to perform a test drive ready. [Automatic Tools] The Automatic menu selections allow you to quickly and automatically backup or restore critical portions of your hard drive. Backup When the Backup tool is selected, you will be prompted to insert the Master working copy of your disk into drive A:. After the disk is inserted, press and the Partition Table, File Allocation Table and Root Directory of the selected hard drive will be backed-up to the floppy drive. [Repair] The Repair tool performs an analysis of the current hard drive. Based on the results of the analysis, Reynolds Utilities will try to correct and repair the damaged areas. When Repair is selected, you will be prompted to insert the Master working copy of your disk into drive A:. After the disk is inserted, press and the Partition Table, File Allocation Table and Root Directory will be written back to the selected drive. NOTE The Repair feature should always be performed before using the Load Mirror feature for data recovery.