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Elementary knowledge of data recovery

2008-12-17T04:21:00.002-08:00

Ⅰ.Elementary knowledge of data recovery
1.Connotation of data
Connotation of data is comprehensive, it includes not only multi-media files such as data
documents, images, voices that stored in file system or data base, but also hardware information,
network addresses and network services, which are used to deposit and manage those information.
2.The essence of data recovery
Data recovery means retrieving lost, deleted, unusable or inaccessible data that lost for various
reasons.
Data recovery not only restores lost files but also recovers corrupted data.
On the basis of different lost reason, we can adopt different data recovery methods. There are
software and hardware reasons that cause data loss, while we can recover data by software and
hardware ways.
Being different from prevention and backup, data recovery is the remedial measure. The best way
to insure the security of your data is prevention and backup regularly. To operate and use your data
according to the normative steps, you can reduce the danger of data loss to the lowest.
3.The scope of data recovery
There are so many forms and phenomenon on data problem, we can divide the objects or scope of
data recovery according to different symptoms.
System problem
The main symptom is that you cannot enter the system or the system is abnormal or computer
closes down. There are complex reasons for this, thus we need adopt different processing methods.
Reasons for this symptom may be the key file of system is lost or corrupted, there is some bad
track on hard disk, the hard disk is damaged, MBR or DBR is lost, or the CMOS setting is
incorrect and so on.
Bad track of hard disk
There are logic and physical bad track. Logic bad track is mainly caused by incorrect operation,
and it can be restored by software. While physical bad track is caused by physical damage, which
is real damage, we can restore it by changing the partition or sector. When there is physical bad
track, you’d better backup your data for fear that the data can not be used any more because of the
bad track.

Partition problem

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Partition problem
If partition can not be identified and accessed, or partition is identified as unformatted, partition
recovery tools such as Partition Table Doctor can be used to recover data.
Files loss
If files are lost because of deletion, format or Ghost clone error, files restoring tools such as Data
Recovery Wizard can be used to recover data.
Password loss
If files, system password, database or account is lost, some special decryption tools that
correspond to certain data form such as Word, Winzip can be used.
Files repair
For some reasons, some files can not be accessed or used, or the contents are full of troubled
characters, the contents are changed so as they can not be read. In this condition, some special
files restoring tools can be tried to restore the files.
4.The principle of data recovery
Data recovery is a process of finding and recovering data, in which there may be some risk, for no
all situations can be anticipated or prearranged. It means maybe there will be some unexpected
things happen. So you need reduce the danger in data recovery to the lowest:
Backup all the data in your hard disk
Prevent the equipment from being damaged again
Don’t write anything to the device on which you want to recover data
Try to get detailed information on how the data lost and the losing process
Backup the data recovered in time.
Ⅱ.Data loss
Actually, there are various reasons that cause data loss; software, hardware, factitious, natural,
intended, unintended, all may cause data loss or damage on storage devices.
Generally, There are two main reasons for data problem: software and hardware whose
corresponding reasons are software reason and hardware reason.
1.Software reason
Virus, format, mis-partition, mis-clone, mis-operation, network deletion, power-cut during
operation all may be the software reasons. The symptoms are usually mis-operation, read error,
can not find or open file, report no partition, not formatted, password lost and troubled characters.
A: Computer Viruses: some malicious virus programs will destroy data, overwrite, or erase the
data contents.
B: Mis-format: fast or completely format partition, thus changing the file system form (NTFS,
FAT32) of partition.
C: Mis-Clone: when backing up the hard disk, mis-clone or overlay the original data on hard disk.
For these, we can use software tools to recover it. So called soft recovery means data can be
recovered by software, not referring to hardware fixing operation for its fault is not because of
hardware failure.
The following are prompts that system can not start up normally:

Invalid Partition Table: Invalid partition table information.

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Invalid Partition Table: Invalid partition table information.
Missing Operating System: “55AA” mark in DOS boot sector lost or DBR corrupted.
Disk Boot Failure: System file read failure.
Bad or missing command interpreter: Can not find command.com file or ‘COMMAND.COM’ file
corrupted.
Invalid system disk: DOS boot record corrupted.
Type the name of the command, Interpreter: DOS partition mark in partition table error or
‘COMMAND.COM’ file lost, corrupted.
Error Loading Operating System: Main boot startup program read boot sector unsuccessfully.
Not found any active partition in HDD: Active partition mark in partition table changed as inactive
partition mark.
2.Hardware reason
Sometimes data loss is because of hardware, such as bad sector in hard disk, power cut, head
damage, circuit panel problem, etc.
When your hardware has some problems, you probably will find: the speed of hardware become
slow, you cannot operate successfully; you cannot read data, etc, which are most often physical
bad track failures.
Correspondingly, data recovery in hardware fix is considered as hard recovery, such as memory
medium damage, track damage, hard disk scrape, head damage, electric machinery damage, chip
burnout and so on..
The most distinct feature or difference between soft recovery and hard recovery is whether the
memory medium itself can be normally accessed by fixing or replacing parts.

Ⅲ.Data Protecting Technologies

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Ⅲ.Data Protecting Technologies
Data security and fault freedom of storage are paid more and more attention. People are attaching
more and more importance to developing new technologies to protect data.
1.SMART Technology
SMART, also called Self-Monitoring Analysis and Report Technology, mainly protects HD from
losing data when there is some problems on the HD. SMART drive can reduce the risk of data
loss, it alarms to predict and remind thus enhancing the data security.
2.SPS
Shake Protecting System, can prevent the head from shaking thus enhancing the anti-knock
characteristics of HD, avoiding damages caused by shake.
3.DFT
DFT, a kind of IBM data protecting technology, can check hard disk via using DFT program to
access the DFT micro codes in hard disk. By DFT, users can conveniently check the HD
operation.
4.Floppy disk array technology
Originally ‘Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks’. A project at the computer science department
of the University of California at Berkeley, under the direction of Professor Katz, in conjunction
with Professor John Ousterhout and Professor David Patterson.
The project is reaching its culmination with the implementation of a prototype disk array file
server with a capacity of 40 GBytes and a sustained bandwidth of 80 MBytes/second. The server
is being interfaced to a 1 Gb/s local area network. A new initiative, which is part of the Sequoia
2000 Project, seeks to construct a geographically distributed storage system spanning disk arrays
and automated libraries of optical disks and tapes. The project will extend the interleaved storage
techniques so successfully applied to disks to tertiary storage devices. A key element of the
research will be to develop techniques for managing latency in the I/O and network paths.
The original (‘Inexpensive’) term referred to the 3.5 and 5.25 inch disks used for the first RAID
system but no longer applies.
The following standard RAID specifications exist:
RAID 0 Non-redundant striped array
RAID 1 Mirrored arrays
RAID 2 Parallel array with ECC
RAID 3 Parallel array with parity
RAID 4 Striped array with parity
RAID 5 Striped array with rotating parity
The basic idea of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is to combine multiple
inexpensive disk drives into an array of disk drives to obtain performance, capacity and reliability
that exceeds that of a single large drive. The array of drives appears to the host computer as a
single logical drive. The Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of the array is equal to the MTBF
of an individual drive, divided by the number of drives in the array. Because of this, the MTBF of
a non-redundant array (RAID 0) is too low for mission-critical systems. However, disk arrays can
be made fault-tolerant by redundantly storing information in various ways.

5.SAN

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5.SAN
SAN, called Storage Area Network or Network behind servers, is specialized, high speed network
attaching servers and storage devices. A SAN allows "any to any" connection across the network,
using interconnect elements such as routers, gateways, hubs and swithes. It eliminates the
traditional dedicated connection between a server and storage, and concept that the server
effectively "owns and manages" the storage devices. It also eliminates any restriction to amount of
data that a server can access, currently limited by the number of storage devices, which can be
attached to the individual server. Instead, a SAN introduces the flexibility of networking to enable
one server or many heterogeneous servers to share a common storage "utility", which may
comprise many storage devices, including disk, tape, and optical storage. And, the storage utility
may be located far from the servers which use it.
6.NAS
NAS is Network Attached Storage. It can store the quick-increased information
.Backup means to prepare a spare copy of a file, file system, or other resource for use in the event
of failure or loss of the original. This essential precaution is neglected by most new computer
users until the first time they experience a disk crash or accidentally delete the only copy of the
file they have been working on for the last six months. Ideally the backup copies should be kept at
a different site or in a fire safe since, though your hardware may be insured against fire, the data
on it is almost certainly neither insured nor easily replaced.
7.Backup
Backup in time may reduce the danger and disaster to the lowest, thus data security can be most
ensured. In different situations, there are different ways. Both backing up important data of system
with hardware and backing up key information with cloning mirror data to different storage device
can work well.

History of hard disk development

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History of hard disk development
The hard disk drive has short and fascinating history. In 24 years it evolved from a monstrosity
with fifty two-foot diameter disks holding five MBytes (5,000,000 bytes) of data to today's drives
measuring 3 /12 inches wide and an inch high (and smaller) holding 400 GBytes (400,000,000,000
bytes/characters). Here, then, is the short history of this marvelous device.
Before the disk drive there were drums... In 1950 Engineering Research Associates of
Minneapolis built the first commercial magnetic drum storage unit for the U.S. Navy, the ERA
110. It could store one million bits of data and retrieve a word in 5 thousandths of a second..
In 1956 IBM invented the first computer disk storage system, the 305 RAMAC (Random Access
Method of Accounting and Control). This system could store five MBytes. It had fifty, 24-inch
diameter disks!
By 1961 IBM had invented the first disk drive with air bearing heads and in 1963 they introduced
the removable disk pack drive.
In 1970 the eight inch floppy disk drive was introduced by IBM. My first floppy drives were
made by Shugart who was one of the "dirty dozen" who left IBM to start their own companies. In
1981 two Shugart 8 inch floppy drives with enclosure and power supply cost me about
$350.00. They were for my second computer. My first computer had no drives at all.
In 1973 IBM shipped the model 3340 Winchester sealed hard disk drive, the predecessor of all
current hard disk drives. The 3340 had two spindles each with a capacity of 30 MBytes, and the
term "30/30 Winchester" was thus coined.
In 1980, Seagate Technology introduced the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the
ST506. It was a full height (twice as high as most current 5 1/4" drives) 5 1/4" drive, with a
stepper motor, and held 5 Mbytes. My first hard disk drive was an ST506. I cannot remember
exactly how much it cost, but it plus its enclosure, etc. was well over a thousand dollars. It took
me three years to fill the drive. Also, in 1980 Phillips introduced the first optical laser drive. In
the early 80's, the first 5 1/4" hard disks with voice coil actuators (more on this later) started
shipping in volume, but stepper motor drives continued in production into the early 1990's. In
1981, Sony shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives.
In 1983 Rodime made the first 3.5 inch rigid disk drive. The first CD-ROM drives were shipped in
1984, and "Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia," followed in 1985. The 3 1/2" IDE drive started its
existence as a drive on a plug-in expansion board, or "hard card." The hard card included the drive
on the controller which, in turn, evolved into Integrated Device Electronics (IDE) hard disk drive,
where the controller became incorporated into the printed circuit on the bottom of the hard disk
drive. Quantum made the first hard card in 1985.
but half (1.6") and full height 5 1/4" drives persisted for several years. In 1988 Conner
introduced the first one inch high 3 1/2" hard disk drives. In the same year PrairieTek shipped the
first 2 1/2" hard disks.
In 1997 Seagate introduced the first 7,200 RPM, Ultra ATA hard disk drive for desktop computers
and in February of this year they introduced the first 15,000 RPM hard disk drive, the Cheetah
X15. Milestones for IDE DMA, ATA/33, and ATA/66 drives follow:
1994 DMA, Mode 2 at 16.6 MB/s
1997 Ultra ATA/33 at 33.3 MB/s
1999 Ultra ATA/66 at 66.6 MB/s
6/20/00 IBM triples the capacity of the world's smallest hard disk drive. This drive holds one
gigabyte on a disk which is the size of an American quarter. The world's first gigabyte-capacity
disk drive, the IBM 3380, introduced in 1980, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds
(about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000.

Main technical specification and parameter of hard disk

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Main technical specification and parameter of hard disk
Capacity
We can see the capacity in two aspects: the total capacity and the capacity of one disk. The whole
capacity is made up of each disk capacity.
If we increase the disk capacity, we would not only improve the disk capacity, improve the speed
of transmission, but also cut the cost down.
Rotate speed.
Rotate speed is the speed disk rotate. It is measured by RPM (Round Per Minute).The rotate speed
of IDE hard disk are 5400RPM, 7200RPM etc.
Average Seek Time
The average seek time gives a good measure of the speed of the drive in a multi-user environment
where successive read/write request are largely uncorrelated.
Ten ms is common for a hard disk and 200 ms for an eight-speed CD-ROM.
Average Latency
The hard disk platters are spinning around at high speed, and the spin speed is not synchronized to
the process that moves the read/write heads to the correct cylinder on a random access on the hard
disk. Therefore, at the time that the heads arrive at the correct cylinder, the actual sector that is
needed may be anywhere. After the actuator assembly has completed its seek to the correct track,
the drive must wait for the correct sector to come around to where the read/write heads are located.
This time is called . Latency is directly related to the spindle speed of the drive and such is
influenced solely by the drive's spindle characteristics. This operation page discussing spindle
speeds also contains information relevant to latency.
Conceptually, latency is rather simple to understand; it is also easy to calculate. The faster the disk
is spinning, the quicker the correct sector will rotate under the heads, and the lower latency will be.
Sometimes the sector will be at just the right spot when the seek is completed, and the latency for
that access will be close to zero. Sometimes the needed sector will have just passed the head and
in this "worst case", a full rotation will be needed before the sector can be read. On average,
latency will be half the time it takes for a full rotation of the disk.

Average Access Time

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Average Access Time
Access time is the metric that represents the composite of all the other specifications reflecting
random performance positioning in the hard disk. As such, it is the best figure for assessing overall
positioning performance, and you'd expect it to be the specification most used by hard disk
manufacturers and enthusiasts alike. Depending on your level of cynicism then, you will either be
very surprised or not surprised much at all, to learn that it is rarely even discussed. Ironically, in
the world of CD-ROMs and other optical storage it is the figure that is universally used for
comparing positioning speed. I am really not sure why this discrepancy exists.
Perhaps the problem is that access time is really a derived figure, comprised of the other
positioning performance specifications. The most common definition is:
Access Time = Command Overhead Time + Seek Time + Settle Time + Latency
The speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often
measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second. These are usually
abbreviated as Mbps and MBps, respectively.
Buffer Size（Cache）
A small fast memory holding recently accessed data, designed to speed up subsequent access to
the same data. Most often applied to processor-memory access but also used for a local copy of
data accessible over a network etc.
When data is read from, or written to, main memory a copy is also saved in the cache, along with
the associated main memory address. The cache monitors addresses of subsequent reads to see if
the required data is already in the cache. If it is (a cache hit) then it is returned immediately and
the main memory read is aborted (or not started). If the data is not cached (a cache miss) then it is
fetched from main memory and also saved in the cache.
The cache is built from faster memory chips than main memory so a cache hit takes much less
time to complete than a normal memory access. The cache may be located on the same integrated
circuit as the CPU, in order to further reduce the access time. In this case it is often known as
primary cache since there may be a larger, slower secondary cache outside the CPU chip.
The most important characteristic of a cache is its hit rate - the fraction of all memory accesses
which are satisfied from the cache. This in turn depends on the cache design but mostly on its size
relative to the main memory. The size is limited by the cost of fast memory chips.
The hit rate also depends on the access pattern of the particular program being run (the sequence
of addresses being read and written). Caches rely on two properties of the access patterns of most
programs: temporal locality - if something is accessed once, it is likely to be accessed again soon,
and spatial locality - if one memory location is accessed then nearby memory locations are also
likely to be accessed. In order to exploit spatial locality, caches often operate on several words at a
time, a "cache line" or "cache block". Main memory reads and writes are whole cache lines.
When the processor wants to write to main memory, the data is first written to the cache on the
assumption that the processor will probably read it again soon. Various different policies are used.
In a write-through cache, data is written to main memory at the same time as it is cached. In a
write-back cache it is only written to main memory when it is forced out of the cache.
If all accesses were writes then, with a write-through policy, every write to the cache would
necessitate a main memory write, thus slowing the system down to main memory speed. However,
statistically, most accesses are reads and most of these will be satisfied from the cache.
Write-through is simpler than write-back because an entry that is to be replaced can just be
overwritten in the cache as it will already have been copied to main memory whereas write-back
requires the cache to initiate a main memory write of the flushed entry followed (for a processor
read) by a main memory read. However, write-back is more efficient because an entry may be
written many times in the cache without a main memory access.
When the cache is full and it is desired to cache another line of data then a cache entry is selected
to be written back to main memory or "flushed". The new line is then put in its place. Which entry
is chosen to be flushed is determined by a "replacement algorithm".
Some processors have separate instruction and data caches. Both can be active at the same time,
allowing an instruction fetch to overlap with a data read or write. This separation also avoids the
possibility of bad cache conflict between say the instructions in a loop and some data in an array
which is accessed by that loop.
Noise & Temperature
It comes from motor. So motor is the key to reduce the noise and temperature. If you can keep the
temperature of hard disk down, then you can keep your hard disk effective.
3.Physical structure of hard disk
HD consists of platter, control circuit board and interface parts.
A hard disk is a sealed unit containing a number of platters in a stack. Hard disks may be mounted
in a horizontal or a vertical position. In this description, the hard drive is mounted horizontally.
Electromagnetic read/write heads are positioned above and below each platter. As the platters spin,
the drive heads move in toward the center surface and out toward the edge. In this way, the drive
heads can reach the entire surface of each platter.

Making Tracks

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Making Tracks
On a hard disk, data is stored in thin, concentric bands. A drive head, while in one position can
read or write a circular ring, or band called a track. There can be more than a thousand tracks on a
3.5-inch hard disk. Sections within each track are called sectors. A sector is the smallest physical
storage unit on a disk, and is almost always 512 bytes (0.5 kB) in size.
The figure below shows a hard disk with two platters.
Figure 3-1 Parts of a Hard Drive
The structure of older hard drives (i.e. prior to Windows 95) will refer to a cylinder/ head/ sector
notation. A cylinder is formed while all drive heads are in the same position on the disk. The
tracks, stacked on top of each other form a cylinder. This scheme is slowly being eliminated with
modern hard drives. All new disks use a translation factor to make their actual hardware layout
appear continuous, as this is the way that operating systems from Windows 95 onward like to
work..
To the operating system of a computer, tracks are logical rather than physical in structure, and are
established when the disk is low-level formatted. Tracks are numbered, starting at 0 (the outermost
edge of the disk), and going up to the highest numbered track, typically 1023, (close to the center).
Similarly, there are 1,024 cylinders (numbered from 0 to 1023) on a hard disk.
The stack of platters rotate at a constant speed. The drive head, while positioned close to the center
of the disk reads from a surface that is passing by more slowly than the surface at the outer edges
of the disk. To compensate for this physical difference, tracks near the outside of the disk are
less-densely populated with data than the tracks near the center of the disk. The result of the
different data density is that the same amount of data can be read over the same period of time,
from any drive head position.
The disk space is filled with data according to a standard plan. One side of one platter contains
space reserved for hardware track-positioning information and is not available to the operating
system. Thus, a disk assembly containing two platters has three sides available for data.
Track-positioning data is written to the disk during assembly at the factory. The system disk
controller reads this data to place the drive heads in the correct sector position.

Logical organization of hard disk

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Logical organization of hard disk
Sectors and Clusters
A sector, being the smallest physical storage unit on the disk, is almost always 512 bytes in size
because 512 is a power of 2 (2 to the power of 9). The number 2 is used because there are two
states in the most basic of computer languages - on and off.
Each disk sector is labelled using the factory track-positioning data. Sector identification data is
written to the area immediately before the contents of the sector and identifies the starting address
of the sector.
The optimal method of storing a file on a disk is in a contiguous series, i.e. all data in a stream
stored end-to-end in a single line. As many files are larger than 512 bytes, it is up to the file
system to allocate sectors to store the file’s data. For example, if the file size is 800 bytes, two 512
k sectors are allocated for the file. A cluster is typically the same size as a sector. These two
sectors with 800 bytes of data are called two clusters.
They are called clusters because the space is reserved for the data contents. This process protects
the stored data from being over-written. Later, if data is appended to the file and its size grows to
1600 bytes, another two clusters are allocated, storing the entire file within four clusters.
Figure 3-2 Sectors and Clusters
If contiguous clusters are not available (clusters that are adjacent to each other on the disk), the
second two clusters may be written elsewhere on the same disk or within the same cylinder or on a
different cylinder - wherever the file system finds two sectors available. A file stored in this
non-contiguous manner is considered to be fragmented. Fragmentation can slow down system
performance if the file system must direct the drive heads to several different addresses to find all
the data in the file you want to read. The extra time for the heads to travel to a number of
addresses causes a delay before the entire file is retrieved.
Cluster size can be changed to optimize file storage. A larger cluster size reduces the potential for
fragmentation, but increases the likelihood that clusters will have unused space. Using clusters
larger than one sector reduces fragmentation, and reduces the amount of disk space needed to store
the information about the used and unused areas on the disk.
Most disks used in personal computers today rotate at a constant angular velocity. The tracks near
the outside of the disk are less densely populated with data than the tracks near the center of the
disk. Thus, a fixed amount of data can be read in a constant period of time, even though the speed
of the disk surface is faster on the tracks located further away from the center of the disk..
Modern disks reserve one side of one platter for track positioning information, which is written to
the disk at the factory during disk assembly. It is not available to the operating system. The disk
controller uses this information to fine tune the head locations when the heads move to another
location on the disk. When a side contains the track position information, that side cannot be used
for data. Thus, a disk assembly containing two platters has three sides that are available for data.

Hard disk interfaces

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Hard disk interfaces
Hard disks also come in several flavors such as IDE (actually ATA), SCSI and SATA, as do optical
drives. ATA is the most common interface used today. SCSI disks can usually be found on servers.
IDE
Integrated Drive Electronics, more commonly called by its acronym IDE, is an interface for hard
drives. IDE is a marketing term; the real standard is called ATA.
EIDE (Enhanced IDE) or ATA-2 was later developed and increased transfer speed, added 32-bit
transactions and DMA support.
ATA
ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. The ATA -term is commonly used
interchangeably with IDE. The older and more common paraller ATA (P-ATA) is currently being
replaced by serial ATA (SATA).
Most PCs have two IDE controllers on the motherboard. One IDE controller can support two
devices, so four storage devices is usually the maximum. Paraller ATA interface uses ribbon cables
with 40 -pin connectors to connect the hard drives to the motherboard. The cable has usually three
connectors. Of these one is connected to the motherboard and the rest two are left for hard drives.
If two hard drives are connected to the same controller, one must be defined as master and the
other one as slave. This is done with jumpers.
ATA-2 is the real standard for what is widely known as EIDE. ATA-2 introduced higher speed data
transfer modes: PIO Modes 3 and 4 plus Multiword DMA Mode 1 and 2. These modes allow the
ATA interface to run data transfers up to about 16MB/second.
SATA
Serial ATA, also known as SATA or S-ATA, is a bus used to communicate between the CPU and
internal storage devices such as hard drives and optical drives. It is designed to eventually replace
the ATA (also known as IDE) bus. Traditional ATA is beginning to be referred to as Parrellel ATA,
P-ATA, or PATA to avoid confusion.
The main difference between SATA and PATA is in the cabling. SATA does away with the
master/slave relationship of PATA (hence the difference in names), as well as PATA's ungainly
ribbon cables. Instead, SATA has much slimmer and easier to manage cables, which will enable
better airflow through cases. The connectors are keyed, preventing connectors from being plugged
upside down. Truly native SATA drives will have different power connectors also.

A third advantage of SATA is hotplugging.

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A third advantage of SATA is hotplugging.
Currently, SATA has a transfer rate of 150 MB/s, which is only 17 MB/s more than standard PATA.
However, with the introduction of SATA II, this is expected to go up to 300 MB/s, with 600 MB/s
being released sometime around 2007. The faster bus isn't expected to affect performance in the
short term, since hard drive performance is usually bottlenecked by the moving parts of the drive.
During the transitional period before true native SATA drives are released, most SATA drives
actually have onboard PATA controllers, which connect to SATA by a bridge. This generally
causes a 30-50% performance drop. Also, PATA power connectors are still being used.
DMA
DMA (Direct Memory Access) is a function of the memory bus in the computer that lets
connected devices like hard disks transfer data to the memory without the intervention of the CPU,
thus speeding up the transfer. This is superior to the way PIO works.
There are two distinct types of direct memory access, DMA and bus mastering DMA. The plain
DMA relies on the DMA controller on the motherboard to grab the system bus and transfer the
data. In bus mastering DMA all this is done by the logic on the interface card itself. Bus mastering
allows the hard disk and memory to work without relying on the old DMA controller built into the
system, or needing any support from the CPU.
USB
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a hardware bus using a serial protocol used by many different
hardware devices and supported in most computers/mainboards. Originally developed by Compaq,
Intel, NEC and Microsoft. It allows many devices to be connected to the bus at the same time, the
theoretical maxmium is 127 devices. The maximum data transfer bandwidth is about 12Mbit/s
(USB2.0 supports 480 Mbit/sec).
Firewire is a less known alternative to USB that (at its time) was better then USB for media
related tasks. As of USB2 there have been significant increases, specifically more bandwidth.
SCSI
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface. Pronounced "scuzzy". It's a specification for a hardware
interface for connecting devices such as hard disks and scanners to a computer.
Most PCs have an ATA(IDE) bus instead of SCSI for connecting internal hard disks. SCSI is seen
more often in servers, as it tends to be faster and more reliable (though more expensive). Another
advantage of SCSI controller is that it requires only one IRQ and can hadle usually at least 7
devices whereas ATA can handle only 2.
Typically, you put a SCSI card in your computer, and then connect internal hard disks with a
ribbon cable to some connector on the card. Also, the card will have an external connector which
you might also be using simultaneously.

Connection synopsis of hard disk

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Connection synopsis of hard disk
Fiber Channel
Fibre Channel Hard Disk Drive
The Enterprise Virtual Array supports any combination of five different Fibre Channel Hard Disk
Drives (HDD) with multiple capacity points and two different rotational speeds. Three drive
capacity points are supported at 36 GB, 72 GB, and 146 GB. Two rotational speeds are supported
at 10,000 RPM and 15,000 RPM.
The following individual drive capacity/rotational speed combinations are available:
146GB 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel HDD
72GB 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel HDD
72GB 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel HDD
36GB 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel HDD
36GB 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel HDD
Five different Fibre Channel HDDs for the Enterprise Virtual Array provides tremendous
flexibility to the target customer base by allowing mixing and matching of capacity and
performance to application needs. Application areas seen as potential markets include OLTP, ERP,
and any other applications requiring large amounts of online storage.
IEEE
Also called Firewire. it is a less known alternative to USB that (at its time) was better then USB
for media related tasks. As of USB2 there have been significant increases, specifically more
bandwidth.
Intermediate
Ⅴ.Hard disk data organization
1.Primary formatting of hard disk
Before restoring data, hard disk usually needs low-level format, partition, high-level format to be
used. The function is establishing certain data logical structure on physical hard disk. Usually hard
disk is divided into 5 regions: MBR, DBR, DIR, FAT and DATA (Here we do not introduce FAT
and NTFS file system), which altogether store and manage data.

Low level format

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Low level format
After setting parameter of hard disk in CMOS Setting, why the hard disk is still unusable? That’s
about Cylinder, Header and Sector. When hard disk is firstly made in the factory, it usually is
“blank”. Only after partitioning tracks and sectors, we can save data on hard disk (Now, before
leaving the factory, many disks have been low-level formatted. So you may need not do the
operation, but it is not unnecessary.)
Main functions of low level format
Low level format can also be called physical format, whose functions are to detect the magnetic
media, to partition tracks, to partition sectors for each track, and to arrange the order of
partitions in track according to the interleave the customer choose. Its main functions are as
following:
Test the hard disk media
Partition tracks for hard disk
Arrange sectors for each track according to the specified interleave
Set the sector ID to each track and finish setting sectors
Test the hard disk surface, mark “bad” to the damaged track and sector
Write a certain ASC to each sector of hard disk
Hard disk is an important storage resource in computer system. Do not low-level format the hard
disk unless it is the only thing possible. For hard disk being used, you need back up important data
before low level format; even if back up is unnecessary, it may take much time to partition,
high-level format, and install system and application programs. Usually, low level format can be
used in the following cases:
1 When you have bought a new hard disk or hard disk adapter, you’d better low level format it
again, which is for the better matching of hard disk and hard disk adapter.
2 “Bad” sectors, which result from long-time operation, often cause “sector not found” error in
DOS. This is because of the loss of sector ID. Sector ID is used to distinguish the sectors. It is
marked onto disk as the magnetization map, which however, may dribble away for long-time
storage or use. Low level format is the only way for computer users to refresh sector ID in
disk. This assignment cannot be done by high level format.
3 Appropriate set of interleave can fasten data transfer. In most conditions, low level format is
the only way to change the interleave.
4 When there are always inexplicable problems, you can take low level format into
consideration.
Ways to low-level format
There are many ways to low-level format. In early time, it can be completed in CMOS or by some
special disk tools, or by writing some short programs in Debug. Nowadays, people usually use
special tools provided free by hard disk manufacturers.

Advanced formatting of hard disk

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2.Advanced formatting of hard disk
High-level format
After partitioning the hard disk, some “independent” logical drivers are founded. If now we start
system from the floppy drive, enter DOS, then you can see the drive letters of DOS partition,
which is on behalf of logical driver, for instance “C:”, “D:” and so on. The system commonly
arranges letters according to alphabet. Now let’s try to enter “C:” or “D:” after that we can see the
system prompt that “DISK MEDIA ERROR”. Why? These logical disks are empty; to use them,
we need create file system. The whole process is high-level format of logic disk. The high-level
format certainly aims at the logic disk, neither physical disk nor certain directory. For file system
is corresponding to logic disk, we can say that high-level format aims at file system. In this article,
logical disk means logical drive.
Format partition
High-level format of DOS logic disk can be completed by “format” command. Main functions of
high-level format are as following:
Assign logical serial numbers for sectors (serial numbers in partition) from cylinder that assigned
by each logical drive
Establish DBR in basic partition, and load 3 system files of DOS if there is “/S” parameter in the
command.
Establish file allocation table (FAT) in each logical disk.
Establish File Directory Table (FDT) that is corresponding to root directory and data area.
If you carry out high-level format by “Format” command, please pay attention to following 4
items.
1. To already activated basic DOS partition (generally it is disk C), you need the following
command:
Format C:/s
By this command, you may install DOS system files after high-level format, to make this logical
disk to become the boot disk. Certainly, you may also use “SYS” command to send system files
after high-level format, that is complete the boot disk and file transmission by the following two
commands:
Format C：
SYS C：

Format hard disk partition in Windows

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Format hard disk partition in Windows
In explore of Windows, everything is displayed by graphics, and different forms (partition) are
expressed by different colors. Click the right key in the corresponding partition, and choose
“format”, you may also choose fast format, complete format and so on.
Format hard disk partition by Partition Magic
In Partition Magic, everything is displayed by graphics, and different forms (partition) are
expressed by different colors. Click the right key in the corresponding partition, and choose
“format”. In the dialogue box, there will be a prompt indicating this operation may destroy your
own data, and in the box you may also choose different format.
Format hard disk by various hard disks special-purpose tool in hard disk factory
Low level format tool provided by various hard disks factory can help hard disk breakthrough
hard disk capacity limit, as well as complete low level format, the high-level format and make
partitions. After partitions are done, you can choose corresponding options step by step.
Attention: To partitions with data, backup the data before format.
High-level format establish the file system, after format, it may carry on write in and read out
operations with file as unit.

3.Data storage region of hard disk

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3.Data storage region of hard disk
In command to know hard disk better, we must have a simple understanding of hard disk
construction. (NTFS uses different file management technology with FAT16 and the FAT32 file
system, here we only introduce FAT16 and FAT32) The hard disk data may divide into 5 parts
approximately according to its different characteristics and functions: MBR area, DBR area, FAT
area, DIR area and DATA area. Among them, MBR is founded by the partition software, while
DBR area, FAT area, DIR area and DATA area are founded by high-level format procedure. When
file system writes in data, it just rewrites corresponding FAT area, DIR area and DATA area. Also
it is the result which these 5 regions affect together. Only by this way, hard disk can be managed
methodically. Here are some introductions to the 5 regions.
MBR:
The first physical sector (cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1) of the first hard drive in the system (the first
hard drive with the BIOS device number 0x80); each hard drive contains an MBR, but not every
BIOS can start the corresponding operation system from every hard drive. When booting from the
hard drive, the BIOS or a special Firmware loads the contents of the MBR to a fixed address in the
memory and allows it to take control. This code then loads either the operation system from a
bootable hard drive partition, or from a complex boot loader, such as LILO.
Short for DOS Boot Record it is the sector at cylinder 0, column 1, and sector 1 of a hard disk.
DBR is the first sector that the operation system visits. It contains a boot program and a BPB
(BIOS Parameter Block). The main task of the boot program is to determine whether the first two
files in root directory of this partition are the boot files of operation system, when MBR hands
over the system mastery to it. Take an example of DOS, i.e. IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. DOS of
low edition requests that these two files are the first two files, and located at the section start of the
root directory, covering the first two directory items (the high edition does not have this
requirement.). Moreover, Windows and DOS are families; therefore, Windows follows the same
management manner, except for the filenames. If it does exist, then reads IO.SYS in the memory,
and hands over mastery to IO.SYS. BPB parameter block records the start sector, ending sector,
file storage form, descriptor of hard disk media, size of root directory, number of FAT and size of
allocated cell.

File Allocation Table (FAT)

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File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system that was developed for MS-DOS and is the primary
file system for consumer versions of Microsoft Windows up to and including Windows ME. The
FAT file system is considered relatively uncomplicated, and because of that, it is a popular format
for floppy disks; moreover, it is supported by virtually all existing operation systems for personal
computers, and because of that, it is often used to share data between several operation systems
booting on the same computer (a multi-boot environment). It is also used on solid-state memory
cards and other similar devices. It has a serious drawback in that when files are deleted and new
files written to the media, the files can become scattered over the entire media making reading and
writing a slow process. De-fragmentation is one solution to this, but is often a lengthy process in
itself and has to be repeated regularly to keep the FAT file system clean.
FAT is also called 12-bit FAT, the file allocation table (FAT) for a floppy disk. The location of
files on a floppy disk are listed in a one-column table in the FAT. Because the width of each entry
in a floppy disk column is 12 bits, the FAT is called FAT12. As a file system for floppy disks, it
had a number of limitations: no support for hierarchical directories, cluster addresses were “only”
12-bits long (which made the code manipulating the FAT a bit tricky) and the disk size was stored
as a 16-bit count of sectors, which limited the size to 32MB.
The FAT file system, as is the case with most file systems, does not utilize individual sectors, and
there are several performance reasons for this. By using individual sectors, the process of
managing disks becomes overly cumbersome since files are being broken into 512-byte pieces. If
you were to take a 20 GB disk volume set up with 512 byte sectors and manage them individually,
the disk would have over 40 million individual sectors. Just keeping track of this many pieces of
information is both time, as well as resource, consuming. While some operation systems do
allocate specific sector storage, they also require some advanced intelligence to do so. Bear in
mind how old the FAT file system is, as it was designed many years ago as merely a simple file
system, without the capability to managed individual sectors.
In order for FAT to manage files with some form of efficiency is to group sectors into larger
blocks referred to as clusters, or allocation units. Cluster size, however, is not a predetermined size,
but rather is determined by the size of the disk volume itself, with small volumes (disk sizes)
resulting in smaller clusters, and larger volumes (disk sizes) using larger cluster sizes. For the
most part, a cluster ranges in size from 4 sectors or 2,048 bytes to 64 sectors or 32,768 bytes. You
should be aware that you may, on some occasions, find 128-sector clusters in use at 65,536 bytes
per cluster, as well as some floppy disks with smaller clusters that is usual at just 1 sector per
cluster. In all cases, the sectors in a cluster are continuous, therefore each cluster is a continuous
block of space on the disk.
Cluster sizing, and therefore partition or volume size, as they are directly related, have an
important impact on performance and disk utilization. In all cases, cluster size is determined at the
time a disk volume is partitioned. Certain third-party partitioning utilities such as Partition Magic
by PowerQuest can alter the cluster size of an existing partition within specific parameters.
However, this aside, once the partition size is selected, so are the cluster sizes fixed.
FAT 16 means that file allocation table that uses 16 bits for addressing clusters. It is commonly
used with DOS and Windows 95 systems. A 16-bit DOS and Windows file system (see FAT) that
varies cluster sizes based on hard drive size. Cluster sizes range from 4K (for drives up to 127MB),
to 4K (255MB drives), 8K (511MB drives), 16K (1GB drives). and 32K (for drives up to 2GB).
The ultimate capacity of a FAT16 partition is 2GB.

FAT 32 is a disk file allocation system from Microsoft that uses 32-bit values for FAT entries

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FAT 32 is a disk file allocation system from Microsoft that uses 32-bit values for FAT entries
instead of 16-bit values used by the original FAT system, enabling partition sizes up to 2TB
(terabytes). FAT32 first appeared in Windows 95B and is also found in Windows 98 and
Windows NT 5.0.
In order to overcome the volume size limit of FAT16 while still allowing memory-constrained
DOS real-mode code to handle the format, Microsoft decided to implement a newer generation of
FAT, known as FAT32, with 32-bit cluster numbers, of which 28 bits are currently used.
In theory, this should support a total of approximately 268,435,438 (< 228) clusters, allowing for
drive sizes in the range of 2 terabytes. However, due to limitations in Microsoft's scandisk utility,
the FAT is not allowed to grow beyond 4,177,920 (< 224) clusters, placing the volume limit at
124.55 gigabytes, unless “scandisk” is not needed. Windows 2000 and XP placed a limit on the
size of FAT32 partitions they can create at 32 GB, Microsoft says this is by design but does not
explain why, and those versions of Windows are quite capable of reading and writing larger
FAT32 partitions created by other means. FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2. The
many changes it incorporated made it a major improvement.
The maximum possible file size for a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232-1 bytes). For most
users, this has become the most nagging limit of FAT32 as of 2005, since video capture and
editing applications can easily exceed this limit, as can the system swap file.
32-bit File Allocation Table File System Not the same as VFAT or FAT, which are both 16-bit file
systems.
DIR
Means Directory, also called FDT，File Directory Table. DIR is the root sector, following after
the second FAT (backup FAT). It records each start cell, files. Operation system can locate files
according to the outset of FAT and FAT.
DATA
DATA area is the real place where data is stored. It is after DIR, covering the most space of hard
disk.
The location of the 5 areas is as following:
Usually, MBR covers 63 sectors (actually it covers only one); DBR covers 32 sectors (actually it
covers the first and the sixth sectors. The first sector works while the sixth is backup of the first);
FAT1=FAT2. The length of FAT will change according to the size of partition and the number of
sectors. DIR changes the most. In early time system, DIR has fixed length of 32 sectors while each
file directory covers 32 bytes. As a result, there are at most 512 items under root directory. Floppy
disk can only contain 112 items, or there would be no file or directory created under root directory.
Afterward, the limitation is broken. From then on, there will be no single root directory, which
becomes part of DATA. Even, root directory files are not right after FAT. They can be in any
position in DATA.

Ⅵ.Common Cases of Partition Recovery

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Ⅵ.Common Cases of Partition Recovery
1.MBR Recovery
On condition that there is no problem with hardware, the first step is MBR recovery. MBR
recovery is simple because it is system data. Though it may be created by different software and
the code might be different, the method is the same. Even if multi-system boot, it is not hard. You
can backup the data to be recovered after the system boot turn to be normal, and then restore the
multi system boot.
Recover MBR by fdisk
The simplest way to recover MBR is Fdisk, whose command is simple too; you can use
“Fdisk/MBR”. Please note that, the hard disk to be operated should be connected on mater IDE
interface as the master hard disk. As to other connection way, we need appoint the interface
location of IDE device in form of “Fdisk/CMBR”.
The command syntax of Fdisk command line is “Fdisk/parameter switch”. Besides that obtained
by “FDISK/？”, there are some hidden parameters information:
/ACTOK
Parameter Function: not to check bad sectors on disk surface
Details: It can speed up partition operation.
/CMBR
Parameter Function: to re-create MBR of appointed disk
Details: Equals to /MBR parameter, except that it can appoint certain disk
/EXT
Parameter Function: to create extend partition.
Details: Creates extend partition on the currency disk , which used to create logical
partition.
/FPRMT
Parameter Function: to check the usage of FAT16 and FAT32 in interactive mode.
Details: When /FPRMT parameter is added, there will be no query of that whether
supports high- capacity hard disk; while there will be a query that it uses
FAT16 or FAT32 when creating a new partition.
/LO
Parameter Function: to rebuild logical partition.
Details: Used to create logical disk, /LOG and /EXT should work together.
/LOGO
Parameter Function: to create logical partition with FAT16
/MBR

Parameter Function: to re-create MBR of master disk

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Parameter Function: to re-create MBR of master disk
Details: to clear the system booting choice recorded in MBR after uninstalling Windows
NT or Windows 2000
/PRI
Parameter Function: to create primary partition and activate it.
Details: e to create primary partition, and the partition will be set active automatically.
/PRIO
Parameter Function: to create primary partition of FAT16 and activate it.
/Q
Parameter Function: not to restart computer when ending Fdisk
Details: unnecessary to restart computer after changing the partition table.
/STATUS
Parameter Function: to display details of current partition
Details: When there is no logical partition in extend partition, the extend partition will not be
displayed.
/X
Parameter Function: no LBA attribute
Details: there would be no partition with LBA attribute.
It makes handier to use Fdisk with these parameters. However, to hide the parameter will be more
dangerous, which calls for more caution.
Uses Fixmbr to restore MBR
Provided by Microsoft, Fixmbr is a MBR recovery tool, which determines hard disk partition
and re-construct MBR through overall search.
Only when using Windows 2000 recovery console that we can use Fixmbr. Windows 2000
recovery console can boot from Windows install CD. Fixmbr only revises MBR; it does not
write other sectors, which is safe. You can get help information of Fixmbr as following when
using Fixmbr/？.
The parameter “DriveNo” is to write a new MBR (driver). The device name can be obtained
from output of the map command. For example, device name:
/Device/HardDisk0
The following command is to write a new MBR to the appointed device:
fixmar /Device/HardDisk0
Attention: If we do not assign DriverNo, the new MBR will be written in booting device,
namely the driver that loads host system. If the system detects invalid or the non-standard
partition mark, it will prompt that whether continue to execute this command or not. Only if
there are some problems with the driver you visit; otherwise, please do not continue.
By default MBR structure will be checked. If it is abnormal, it will prompt that whether
recover or not. If choose “Y”, it will search partitions. When it has found the partition, it will
also prompt that whether to revise MBR or not. If choose “Y”, recovery will be finished. If
the system is down now, please inactivate the anti-virus function in BIOS first and then
continue.
By default, it will search all existing hard disk, and finish all mentioned operations above. If
the result is not right, you may use “/Z” parameter to clear the result and restart; then it
returns to the original condition.

Recovery of Partition

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2.Recovery of Partition
The partition recovery is generally the second step of the whole process. Because apart from some
tools that directly reads and writes hard disk, most of tool software runs under operation system,
working with the system calling. While operation system’s visiting disk is on the basis of MBR
and DBR; without MBR and DBR, operation system is unable to visit file system. Therefore, if
the partition table is corrupted, we need rebuild partition table, which is usually fulfilled manually;
in some special cases it can be done automatically by some working software.
If partition table is corrupted, there are many tools to rebuild it automatically, if only the problem
is not too serious. If it is too serious, or the partition table structure is too complex, it may possibly
be out of the reach of their ability to rebuild. In this case, we need do it manually. Usually we use
some tool software to recover the lost partition table, such as Norton Utilities 8.0, DiskMan,
KV3000/Kavfix 和PartitionMagic etc. Here we introduce Partition Table Doctor.
3.Partition Table Doctor
Partition Table Doctor is the only real software for hard disk partitions recovery. When you come
up against a drive error (not hardware failure) this versatile tool would automatically check and
repair the Master Boot Record, partition table, and the boot sector of the partition with an error, to
recover the FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/NTFS5/EXT2/EXT3/SWAP partition on IDE/ATA/SATA/SCSI
hard disk drives. It can create an emergency floppy disk or a bootable CD to recover the bad
partition even if your operation system fails to boot. Partition Table Doctor manages for MS-DOS,
Freedos, Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.
There are two modes for partition recovery: “auto mode” and “interactive mode”.

DBR recovery

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DBR recovery
MBR is for the whole hard disk, while DBR is for individual partition.
The first sector of each MBR is DBR. Just as MBR, DBR contains some information that the boot
operation system need. If DBR is corrupted, you can neither visit the partition nor start up the
operation system of the partition.
If boot sector is damaged, the possible symptoms are:
1. Invalid media type reading drive
2. Abort Retry Fail?
3. File system is displayed as “RAW”
4. Windows may ask if you want to format the drive
5. File names contain “weird” characters
6.”Sector not found” messages
Etc.
Moreover, for partitions of NTFS, the functions of DBR are not all the same as that of FAT
partition. For FAT partition, DBR locates FDT and FAT (correspondingly as well as DATA), but
not verifying the correctness and reasonableness of FDT and FAT. For partition of NTFS, we need
more units to load the file system, which is more complex than FAT.
What if when the DBR is destroyed? Usually, there are methods as following:

Recover DBR by Format

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Recover DBR by Format
If there is no important data in this partition, or you have backed up the data, the best way to
recover DBR is direct high-level format, fast format or complete format. If there is no limitation of
partition form and capacity, there would be no difference between DOS format and Windows
format except speed. Format is quite thorough, it can completely rearrange the data storage, even
“reset” former file fragmentation.
Although this method is simple, it cannot recover data actually especially if you choose some
different parameters. If you choose different system reserved sectors, or use clusters of different
size, or change the size of FAT table etc, data recovery will be more difficult.
Data recovery by Fixboot of Partition Table Doctor
If the boot sector of a Fat16/Fat32/Ntfs partition was corrupted, it will be marked with X by
Partition Table Doctor. If you cannot access a Fat16/Ntfs partition and the partition was marked
with X. Right click the partition and choose Fixboot. Partition Table Doctor will automatically
check and restore the boot sector of the partition.

Boot partition:

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Boot partition:
io.sys msdos.sys ntldr bootlog.txt
Other partitions: _restore recycled
Note:
For Fat16/Fat32 partition, fixboot can effectively restore damaged boot sector of partition.
For NTFS partition, even if boot sector is correct but MFT (Main File Table) is corrupted,
symptoms are the same. We recommend you download the demo version of Partition Table Doctor
to determine whether boot sector of partition was corrupted.
Mostly, scandisk that originally in operation system will destroy more than they retrieve. Please
stop scandisk after logging on.
In addition, you may use WinHex to recover DBR
WinHex is powerful in disk editor. With backup DBR in WinHex to recover the DBR sector is
convenient and fast. But for its strong specialization of WinHex we recommend that you choose
easy-to-use software tool for integrity and correctness of the data.
4.The FAT table recovery
CIH destroys data backwards from partitions. In this case, system data in the former part may be
destroyed and lost. If FAT2 is still intact, we may make FAT2 to cover FAT1. Usually we use
DiskEdit and WinHex. Regarding to other forms of destruction such as format and so on, we
usually make use of tool software to scan the whole disk, seldom manual recovery; because there
are even dozens of trillions sectors a partition has several trillions. Depending on the manual
analysis is impossible. For some extremely important data file, we can also recover manually.
Recover FAT by DiskEdit
After recovering DBR of FAT, if part of FAT1 is damaged while FAT2 remains intact (It is the
most situation when destroyed by CIH), we may use FAT2 to cover FAT1. The specific method is
to find the start sector of FAT2 and then start searching the start sector of DATA (if it is FAT16,
search FDT). By this way, we can figure out the length of FAT table. According to length and the
start sector of FAT2, we may know the start sector of FAT1. Copy FAT2 to the damaged FAT1, we
can finally recover the whole partition.
Recover FAT by WinHex
Principle of recovering FAT by WinHex is the same as that by DiskEdit. After recovering DBR,
we can make FAT2 to cover FAT1. After finding FAT2, we begin searching the start sector of
DATA (if it is FAT16, search FDT). The division is distinct, because the conclusion part of FAT
must be 0 regions, otherwise there is not any free space (even so, in ordinary circumstances, there
is still a bit of space in FAT after scanning DATA area. So the end of the last sector must be 0 too.).
While at the beginning of DATA region or FDT region it mustn’t be 0. No matter there is fixed
FDT, the system always begins from second cluster. If there is FDT, it follows closely FAT2, and
its file registration must exist; if there is not, then begins from data area where some data must
exists. Thus we may figure out the length of the FAT table, and then the start sector of FAT1
according to the length and the start sector of FAT2. Copy FAT2 to the damaged FAT1 we can
finally recover this partition.

Introduction of Data Recovery Wizard 3.0

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Ⅶ.Case Study
1. Introduction of Data Recovery Wizard 3.0
Data Recovery Wizard is an advanced data recovery software. In Windows, this software can
recover data on different storage media and partitions.
General Functions of Data Recovery Wizard 3.0
Deletedrecovery: This module works only with deleted files and allows to “undelete” them
(another popular term is “unerase”). Intact file system is important for this module. If you know
that there is something wrong with your file system (for example, you did not delete some
folder/files but you cannot access them) or if you see something strange with Windows, you
should use “AdvancedRecovery” module.
Formattedrecovery: A common data recovery situation is accidentally reformatting a partition.
The FormatRecovery tool will allow you to recover files from a partition, which has been
accidentally formatted or reinstalled. This type of recovery will ignore the existing file system
structures and search for structures associated with the previous file system. If you are not
satisfied with the result, you should use “AdvancedRecovery” module
AdvancedRecovery:you can use this function to recover your damaged system, deleted partitions,
misoperation of HD and deletion caused by virus.
RawRecovery:The RawRecovery tool allows you to scan severely corrupted partitions for files
with a file signature search algorithm. This tool will help you recover files from a partition with
damaged directory structures.
2. Matters needs attention before recovery
(1)Never operate on partition (such as write and create file) where the data lost.
(2)Please close any other application program when Data Recovery Wizard 3.0 is running.
(3)Make sure that there is no physical failure (such as physical bad track) on the disk you are
operating. If there is any problem, please stop running Data Recovery Wizard 3.0, and send
your disk to maintenace station.
(4)Do not save the recovered files to the original partition. You need make sure that there is
enough free space to save the recovered data; also you can save your files to removable devices
or network devices.

Recover encrypt/compressed files in NTFS

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5.Recover encrypt/compressed files in NTFS
Attention: if you want to recover encrypt/compressed file in NTFS, you need Data Recovery
Wizard Professional 3.0, for Data Recovery Wizard 3.0 does not support encrypt/compressed file
recovery.
Encrypt/compressed file recovery and deletedrecovery are mostly the same. But more attention
should be paid to that to rightly recover encrypt/compressed files , you need use the account that
create encrypt/compressed files to log on Windows; moreover, the encrypt files must be recovered
and saved to partition of other NTFS type not FAT partition, or the recovered encrypt files can not
be opened correctly.

Data recovery in dynamic volume

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8. Data recovery in dynamic volume
If you want to recover the data lost in a dynamic volume, you need Data Recovery Wizard
Professional. Data Recovery Wizard does not support dynamic volume recovery.
Data Recovery Wizard professional supports simple volume, spanned volume, striped volume,
mirrored volume and RAID5.
The method is the same as that of other types of partitions.
Attention: if you have lost the dynamic volume, Data Recovery Wizard professional can not
recover your data except that on simple volume.

Data recovery when GHOST Image restore failed.

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12．Data recovery when GHOST Image restore failed.
In this case, there can be different recovery scenarios according to specific damage of the partition
and file system:
Usually, after the failure of GHOST Image restore, partition table of the target disk would be in
some damaged condition, you can search the partition where you want to recover data by
“Searching for Partition “function in “AdvancedRecovery”.
If the partition is found, please refer to “Data recovery when parts of partitions are lost”.
If not, please refer to “data recovery when all the partitions are lost”.
13. After Partition Magic size revision/ combination/ division of partitions fails, how to
recover the lost data?
In this occasion please refer to “Data recovery when GHOST Image restore failed”
14. When using Data Recovery Wizard 3.0 to recover files, there is some strange sound in
HD. How to handle it?
Your HD has some hardware problems. In this occasion, you need stop running Data Recovery
Wizard 3.0 at once, and then send your HD to HD maintenance station.
15. HD cannot be detected in BIOS, how to recover data by Data Recovery Wizard 3.0
The precondition of data recovery by Data Recovery Wizard 3.0 is that the storage device has no
hardware problem and runs normally; or Data Recovery Wizard 3.0 can not help you.
16. There is not enough space in hard disk to save the recovered files, nor there is removable
storage device, how to handle it?
You can save you files to other host computers via network, please refer to steps as following:
Choose another host computer on network:

20. I have recovered some files, but I cannot rightly open them.

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20. I have recovered some files, but I cannot rightly open them.
In some cases, files recovered by using Data Recovery Wizard cannot be opened, which means the
data has been badly destroyed.
You can try the following steps:
1. Send the badly destroyed files to our email (repair@easeus.com); we will try our best to recover
for you.
2. Try to fix them with some file recovery tools
Attentions: Some documents that are badly damaged are irrecoverable.
21. In what occasion I cannot rightly recover data?
In occasions as following, you cannot rightly recover data:
1. Operations that cause the data are covered, such as: failure of GHOST image restore,
virus attack, and mass write operation to the disk where you want to recover data etc.
2. There are some physical problems in storage devices.