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DISKREAD.DOC
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1987-08-04
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Version 1.5 July 14, 1987
Added asking the number of sectors that are to be copied to option four.
Version 1.4 June 24, 1987
Added the capability of copying a hard drive to another hard drive.
This option will be shown to the user, only if both drives are the same type.
Version 1.3 March 16, 1987
Minor cosmetic changes.
Version 1.2 November 4, 1986
Since this version has some new additions and since they are not as straight
forward as version 1.1, this DOC has been created.
MAIN MENU
The main menu gives you five options.
Option one allows you to change which drive you want to look at (if there is
more than one) and at which point on the drive you wish to start looking.
Option two displays for you the hard disk partition table. If there are two
drives, both are displayed at the same time.
Option three displays the requested data sector. The data sector can be
ANYWHERE on the hard drive. Unlike older Norton's Utilities, which limits you
to the DOS partition area, this program allows you to go anywhere. The
operation of this option is explained in more detail later on.
Option four gives you the ability to copy a sector from one spot to another.
It can even be done across drives. Be careful when copying sectors. You could
end up making your drive useless. You are also asked how many sectors to copy.
These sectors are sequential and if copying within the same drive, make sure
that the sectors don't overlap to the point where what you want copied gets
changed before it is moved. As an example, if you tell it to move sector one
to sector five (on the same track and head) and tell it to copy six sectors,
sectors five and six will be changed before they get copied.
Option five, if available, will allow you to copy one hard drive to another.
This option is shown, only if the drives are the same type, ie, number of
tracks, sectors, heads, etc.
Remember that whenever the program asks for a drive, it will be a 0 or 1,
not C or D or E, etc.
DATA DISPLAY SCREEN
The data display screen shows you the data, of the selected sector, in both
hex and ASCII format. In ASCII, control characters are shown in reverse.
This makes it a little easier to see the character, as compared to Norton's.
The top line shows where you are currently located. On the right is a little
three character display that indicates the following:
D - The displaying of read sectors is on. When turned off it speeds
up the operation of another option.
A - Auto-incrementing is turned on.
W - Re-write is on.
When auto-incrementing through the sectors, in order to find bad places,
it is suggested that the data display be turned off. This greatly increases
the reading of the data sectors.
Auto-incrementing is used two ways. One of them is to just sequentially go
through the sectors and display the data. The other is used with the RE-WRITE
option. When a data sector is read and there is a correctable ECC error,
the data is still good, but most programs will consider it an error and abort.
By using the re-write option, the same data is re-written to the disk and in
most cases causes the original error to go away. So, if you are experiencing
lots of disk error, like I was (which is why the option exists), turn off
display, turn on re-write and then turn on auto-incrementing. It will go
through all of the sectors, over and over again, until you turn off
auto-incrementing. But, when an ECC error is found and the data is good,
the data is re-written. Other error codes can be seen by looking at the
INT13.ASM code. It contains a complete list of error codes.
Pressing the Enter key will cause the help menu to appear. But, following is
a complete list of the function keys and what they do:
F1 - Decrement the cylinder value
F2 - Increment the cylinder value
F3 - Decrement the head value
F4 - Increment the head value
F5 - Decrement the sector value
F6 - Increment the sector value
F7 - Turn off re-write (default)
F8 - Turn on re-write
F9 - Turn off auto-increment (default)
F10 - Turn on auto-increment
Alt F1 - Turn off display data
Alt F2 - Turn on data display (default)
When data is read, an error code is displayed on the top line. The hex value
is what the hard disk controller board returns after doing the read operation.
if it is 11h, then an ECC error existed and the data is good. The re-write
option should be turned on and that sector read again. After it is re-written,
read it again to make sure that the error code is zero. If the error code is
a 10h, then an ECC error occured, but the data displayed is the same data that
was there before the new sector was read, at least attempted to be read. In
this case, the re-write option won't do you any good. You may want to try
writing a different sector there to see if that fixes it. If the data is text
then it can easily be fixed. But if the sector contained FAT data, directory
data, for program data (binary data), that that file is basically shot. In the
lower right corner of the ASCII display area, the last place an error occurred
is displayed. It is listed in cylinder, head and sector order.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
A future release will allow writing of changed data, just like Norton's
Utilities, but with a difference. You will also be able to change
the data in the ASCII window. No more looking up hex values of characters.
Also, a future release will understand the PC-DOS 3.30 extended partition.
If you have any problems, comments or code enhancements, let me know. The
DISKREAD.BAS source code contains the address of where to send things.
Mike Brown
SYSOP of NICBUL