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Active@ Partition Recovery v 3.0 Copyright ⌐ 2004 Active@ Data Recovery Software USERS MANUAL Contents 1. PRODUCT OVERVIEW 2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 3. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DEMO AND COMMERCIAL VERSION 4. OPERATING PROCEDURES 4.1. Bootable floppy disk (startup disk) preparation 4.2. Program start and information display 4.3. Scan for deleted partitions and drives 4.4. Scan existing or damaged partitions and drives 4.5. Partition recovery (Professional version only) 4.6. Backup MBR, Partition Tables(s), Volume Boot Sectors 4.7. Restoring MBR, Partition Table and Boot Sectors from backup 4.8. Disk Image creation 4.9. Long file names display 4.10. Command line parameters 5. COMMON QUESTIONS 5.1 Partition is damaged after a virus attack and cannot be neither recognized nor scanned. What to do? 5.2 How to prevent the Master Boot Record (MBR) corruption? 5.3 How to force LBA mode to access larger drives (more than 8GB size)? 5.4 Situations which Active@ Partition Recovery is unable to restore partitions or Logical Drives in. 5.5 Why cannot FDISK and Windows 98 see a detected and recovered partition? 5.6 Why do I receive an error message while trying to save the partition information back to the Hard disk Drive? 1. PRODUCT OVERVIEW Active@ Partition Recovery is a very small, easy to use DOS Program (only 150k in size) using which you can: - Recover deleted partitions (FAT and NTFS) - Restore deleted FAT and NTFS Logical Drives - Scan hard drives and detect deleted FAT and NTFS partitions and/or Logical Drives - Preview files and folders on deleted partition or drive, to recover proper data - Backup MBR (Master Boot Record), Partition Table, Volume Boot Sectors - Restore MBR, Partition Table and Volume Boot Sectors from backup if damaged - Create Drive Image It will help you when: - Drives or partitions inadvertently deleted (using fdisk or other programs) - Hard Disk Logical Structure has been corrupted - Boot sector is damaged by virus 2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Active@ Partition Recovery requires: - AT compatible CPU with 286 or greater processor - 640Kb of RAM - 1.44 Mb floppy diskette drive - EGA 640x480 or better screen resolution - Bootable Floppy disk containing MS-DOS 6.0+, or startup disk for Windows 95/98 - HDD of type IDE/ATA/SCSI attached to be recovered. 3. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DEMO AND PROFESSIONAL VERSIONS Active@ Partition Recovery version DEMO COMMERCIAL Can be placed to and run from bootable floppy Yes Yes Displays complete physical and logical drive information Yes Yes Supports IDE / ATA / SCSI drives Yes Yes Supports large (more than 8GB) size drives Yes Yes Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 file systems Yes Yes Supports MS-DOS, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP partitions Yes Yes Detects deleted primary/extended partitions and drives Yes Yes Scans partitions damaged by virus or with damaged MBR Yes Yes Ability to preview partition data before recovery Yes Yes Displays long file names Yes Yes Ability to create Disk Image as set of 1GB files Yes Yes Creates backup for MBR, Partion Table, Boot Sectors Yes Yes Restores MBR, Partion Table and Boot Sectors from backup - Yes Saves detected partition information back to HDD - Yes 4. OPERATING PROCEDURES 4.1. Bootable floppy disk (startup disk) preparation If you do not have bootable floppy, you can prepare such disk from MS-DOS, Windows 95/98 the following ways: - If you boot in MS-DOS or in Command Prompt mode of Windows 95/98, insert blank floppy and type: FORMAT A: /S and follow the instructions on a screen. - If you boot in Windows 95/98/ME, go to the "Control Panel" then "Add/Remove Programs", then switch to tab "Startup Disk" and click button "Startup Disk..." and follow the instructions - If you boot in Windows XP, insert blank floppy, right-click A: drive, choose "Format...", check "Create an MS-DOS startup disk" option and click "Start" button Copy Active@ Partition Recovery (PR.EXE) to the bootable floppy disk 4.2. Program start and information display - Boot from the floppy in DOS mode, or in Command Prompt mode in Windows 95/98 - Run Active@ Partition Recovery by typing: A:\> PR.EXE At the left side you will see the list of detected Hard Disk Drives (HDD). If HDD has partitions and logical drives, they are displayed beneath. If partitions were deleted, or HDD has space that is not occupied by partitions, you'll see "Unallocated" space. Use arrows to move cursor between HDD and logical drives. When you position cursor to the particular drive, its information is displayed at the right side. 4.3. Scan for deleted partitions and drives - Run Active@ Partition Recovery - Locate the HDD on the left pane that contains deleted partition - Position the cursor on "Unallocated" under HDD containing deleted partition and press [ENTER]. Active@ Partition will start to scan the disk - If the deleted partition is found - it is displayed and Active@ Partition will suggest to add it to the list of found partitions - After adding the partition, files in the partition can be previewed. Just position the cursor on the partition and press the [ENTER] key - If you are satisfied with the information found you can save the partition table while exiting the program (see paragraph 4.5) Note: If "Extended" partition with logical drives was deleted, you'll have to scan two times: - Scan "Unallocated" space and you will be suggested to add partition of type "Extended" - Then scan "Unallocated" space beneath "Extended" partition, and you'll detect and add logical drives located in the "Extended" partition 4.4. Scan existing or damaged partitions and drives When a partition is damaged, i.e. of type "Unknown", Active@ Partition Recovery cannot handle it properly. Preview of files and folders is not possible in that partition. However partition exists and there is no "Unallocated" space on the screen, so we cannot scan it for detection of other partition information. Start the program using parameter -ignoreMBR that explicitly tells to Active@ Partition Recovery to ignore default MBR and partition information, and to scan drive like the one having all partitions deleted. For example: A:\> PR.EXE -ignoreMBR=80h After program start, the "Unallocated" space will be displayed beneath HDD 80h. Scan it by pressing [ENTER] to try to detect and recover the partitions as it was described in paragraph 4.3. 4.5. Partition recovery (Professional version only) - Run Active@ Partition Recovery - Scan for deleted partitions and drives as it was described in paragraph 4.3 or - Scan damaged partitions and drives as it was described in paragraph 4.4 - If you are satisfied with the information found you can save the partition table while exiting the program by pressing [ESC] key. - Press [Y] to confirm saving partition information, or [N] if you want to leave program without saving. - If there is no partition with "Active" status exists, you'll be asked to select one of partitions to be active. Select one and press [ENTER] - You will be prompted to create MBR backup for the current configuration before found parition information is saved to HDD. It can be helpful if later on you'll decide to go back to the configuration that was before partition recovery. - Press [Y] to backup current MBR, Partition Table and Volume Boot Sectors - Press [N] to cancel backup of the current configuration. After partition information is saved, machine re-boot is required. 4.6. Backup MBR, Partition Tables(s), Volume Boot Sectors In some situations such as a virus attack, power surge, etc, Master Boot Record can get damaged. Due to this damage the computer becomes un-responsive and unbootable. To prevent this you can backup your partition information: - Run Active@ Partition Recovery - Select HDD you want to backup - Insert floppy disk and press [Ctrl]+[B] - Information will be saved to A:\HDD80h.MBR if you backup HDD 80h Using this floppy disk Master Boot Record can be restored (see paragraph 4.7) IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE MBR AND PARTITIONS BACKUP EVERY TIME THE COMPUTER CONFIGURATION IS CHANGED (SUCH AS ADDING/REMOVING HDDs, PARTITIONS, LOGICAL DRIVES) 4.7. Restoring Master Boot Record, Partition Table and Boot Sectors from backup To restore partition information from backup follow the steps: - Insert the floppy disk containing the Master Boot Record backup file - Run Active@ Partition Recovery with parameter -restoreMBR : A:\> PR.EXE -restoreMBR=80h This command will restore the Master Boot Record, Partition Table(s) and Boot Sectors. You can view paritions, logical drives and preview files. - While exiting the program, save this information back to Hard Disk Drive if you want to. See paragraph 4.5 for details. Note: DEMO version of the program allows you to load partition information from the backup and preview partition structure and files, but does not allow you to save it when you exit the program. Professional version of Active@ Partition Recovery allows you to save parition information from the backup back to the HDD. 4.8. Disk Image creation A "Disk Image" is a copy of the drive saved in file. Disk Image is used for backup purposes or for the analysis by other utilities like WinHex. Using Active@ Partition Recovery "Disk Image" for the whole Hard Disk Drive or for a particular logical drive can be created. - Start Active@ Partition Recovery - Select the drive (HDD or Logical) to create the "Disk Image" - Press "Ctrl+I" - Select the path of another logical or network drive where you wish to save "Disk Image" - Press OK [ENTER] key - View the progress and wait until creation of disk image is finished - Another way (available in Professional version only) is to run software with the parameter -image. For example: A:\>PR.EXE -image80h=E:\ Resulting Disk Image is saved in the following files: Drive_80h.hdd, Drive_80h.001, Drive_80h.002... Each file (except the last one) has size 1GB. MS-DOS does not support files more than 2GB in size. Due to this reason the files are separated in 1GB file size. If you want the Disk Image in one file - merge them later on manually. 4.9. Long file names display Starting from Windows 95, file name is not limited to 8.3 pattern anymore and can have the length up to 255 characters. Standard View displays all files and folders the same way as DOS does, i.e. forms file name using 8.3 format and displays it. However sometimes it is not convenient to see the only first symbols of the long file name. To display long filenames (up to 36 symbols): - Boot in DOS mode and run Active@ Partition Recovery - Scan the particular drive by pressing [ENTER] - Press [TAB] key to switch to long filenames view 4.10. Command line parameters Active@ Partition Recovery has the set of command line parameters. To see them and their definition, type: A:\> PR.EXE -? -lba - force LBA mode for access to all detected HDDs -lba=N - force LBA mode for access to the particular HDD, where N=[80h,81h,82h,83h] -restoreMBR=N - restore of MBR from the backup for the particular drive where N=[80h,81h,82h,83h] -ignoreMBR=N - do not load MBR information for the particular drive, where N=[80h,81h,82h,83h] It allows you to scan existing or damaged parition -imageN=PATH - create image for the physical drive (Professional version only),"\ where N=[80h,81h,82h,83h] and PATH=<drive>:\\<path\\> 5. COMMON QUESTIONS 5.1 Partition is damaged after a virus attack and cannot be neither recognized nor scanned. What to do? Problem: Due to a virus attack my computer may not boot and FDISK displays partition of unknown type. Active@ Partition Recovery also shows partition of "Unknown" type and does not allow previewing and scanning. Reason: When a partition is damaged, i.e. its type is "Unknown", Active@ Partition Recovery cannot handle partitions of the type "Unknown", so it does not allow to preview files in that partition. However partition exists and there is no "Unallocated" space. Solution: Start the program with a parameter -ignoreMBR to ignore default partitions. See paragraph 4.4 for details 5.2 How to prevent the Master Boot Record (MBR) corruption? Problem: In some situations such as a virus attack, power surge, etc, Master Boot Record can get damaged. Due to this damage the computer becomes un-responsive and unbootable. Solution: If a Master Boot Record and partition information backup is available on a floppy drive, then using Active@ Partition Recovery you can recover and restore Master Boot Record. Boot the machine using that floppy and run Active@ Partition Recovery and restore Master Boot Record from the backup. IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE MBR AND PARTITIONS BACKUP EVERY TIME THE COMPUTER CONFIGURATION IS CHANGED ( SUCH AS ADDING/REMOVING HDDs, PARTITIONS, LOGICAL DRIVES). See paragraph 4.6 for details 5.3 How to force LBA mode to access larger drives (more than 8GB size)? Problem: I use Windows NT installed under VMWare. I'm trying to scan partition having size 10GB or greater and get an error message saying "Error reading physical sector". Is it a drive's problem or your software does not support drives more than 8GB? Reason: It could be bad clusters on the drive as well as BIOS/OS that does not support LBA mode problem. MS-DOS versions prior to 6.0 does not support LBA mode. Some versions of BIOS could report that LBA mode is not supported for larger drives, however actually it does. VMWare v.3.0 is an example. Active@ Partition Recovery tries read the drive 100 times. In case of read failure it reports this problem. Solution: Make sure that you boot your system using the proper version of DOS. If it is MS-DOS then version must be 6.0+. In most cases you do NOT need to tell Active@ Partition Recovery to force LBA mode, because if BIOS supports it, Active@ Partition Recovery does it automatically, giving you access to larger sized hard drives. If BIOS reports that LBA mode is not supported, Active@ Partition Recovery uses standard Int13h to access the drive. You could try to force LBA mode by starting Active@ Partition Recovery with a parameter -LBA, for example: A:\>PR.EXE -LBA However it will not help if BIOS actually does not support LBA mode. It usually happens with old versions of BIOS. In this case you can try to take out HDD and plug it to another machine having newer version of BIOS. In situation if your drive has lots of bad clusters, its advisable to save your data onto another physical drive and to get rid of the damaged hard drive. 5.4 Situations which Active@ Partition Recovery is unable to restore partitions or Logical Drives in. If you have: - Created and formatted new partition instead of deleted one - Written some information to the sectors where partition information was located In the above scenarios most likely Active@ Partition Recovery will not be able to detect the deleted partition as the partition information has been overwritten. Even in situations if the Master Boot Record and Partition Table(s) have been detected and restored successfully, some data on the drive might have been overwritten and can be seen as garbage data in some folders. 5.5 Why cannot FDISK and Windows 98 see a detected and recovered partition? Problem: I used Active@ Partition Recovery to detect and recover a deleted partition successfully. However after reboot FDISK is not able to see the partition. Also if I try to access the C: drive, an error message is displayed saying that drive is not valid. Reason: Both Partition and Master Boot Record were damaged. Solution: Re-create MBR by running FDISK with parameter /MBR: A:\>FDISK.EXE /MBR After MBR is re-created, partitions can be detected if Active@ Partition Recovery restored them successfully. 5.6 Why do I receive an error message while trying to save the partition information back to the Hard disk Drive? Problem: While saving the partition information I receive an error message saying "Error writing physical sector". Not able to save the partition information to the HDD. Reasons: 1. Boot sector is write-protected. Some BIOS allow protecting Boot sector from write operations in order to prohibit viruses to damage it. 2. Run the software from Windows 95/98/ME "MS-DOS Prompt" console. 3. Hard Disk Drive is physically damaged (i.e. has bad clusters). Solutions: 1. Check your BIOS settings. If you have setting like "Virus Warning", make sure that it's been "Disabled". 2. DO NOT try to run the software from under Windows Operating System! Boot your computer in "Command Prompt" mode (press [F8] when Windows boots) or boot from the floppy disk. 3. If your HDD is physically damaged, it's better to copy all important data from there and use another Hard Disk Drive or you are at risk of loosing your data.