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Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ USER-SUPPORTED SOFTWARE _______________________ Much of the software which is available for your computer is produced and sold on the assumption that you are a crook, who will take any available opportunity to cheat its creators and vendors out of their rightful reward. It is copy-protected within an inch of its (and your computer's) life and is still priced at a level which guarantees its producers a profit even if four or five illegal copies are made for each one sold. User-supported software is different. You may have got a copy of this package free from a friend or a bulletin board or (for a nominal fee) from a users' group or software library. In any case, you have a perfectly legal copy. You are encouraged to make as many copies of the package as you like and to distribute them to all your friends. If, after trying the program out, you find that it is useful and want to keep it, you should register your copy by sending the registration fee ($30.00,) together with the completed registration form, to the address on the form. Only your conscience can make you do ____ this, but bear in mind that the distributors of "user-supported" software make the assumption that you are honest and willing to pay a reasonable price for a useful program, while many software vendors would apparently rather believe you are a crook, and decide who you would rather prove right. As a bonus, registered users will get a copy of V3.00 of HDTEST, which includes a number of significant enhancements over V2.73, and will be entitled to support and help with HDTEST-related problems (including telephone support) for a year from the date of registration. Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ____________ HDTEST was written to allow comprehensive Read/Write testing of hard disks on IBM PCs, XTs, ATs, and "true" compatibles. Although many programs, including IBM's diagnostics, allow "surface scanning" and seek testing of hard disks, none that are available to the average user test whether the whole disk can retain the data that is or will be written to it. HDTEST's principal "claim to fame" is the ability thoroughly to test the surface of a hard disk which contains data while preserving the data (although data loss is unavoidable if a _________________________ cluster which is in use has become unreadable). HDTEST tests the disk ____ much more thoroughly than programs such as DFixer, Mace, and Norton's DT. Mace and DT, like many public domain "disk test" programs, simply read every cluster on the disk and report on any errors encountered. DFixer does better, writing 4 test patterns to every free cluster and checking that they can be read back correctly, but it makes no attempt to test clusters that are already in use - the very ones which contain your precious data! HDTEST writes 20 different test patterns to every cluster on the disk _____ and checks that each pattern can be read back correctly, while preserving the contents of the clusters that already contain data. HDTEST can also (on most systems) detect errors which are minor enough to be correctable (and corrected) by the disk controller's own "error- correcting code" (ECC). These errors are normally totally invisible to programs running under DOS and will not usually be picked up by other disk test utilities. They may, however, be early signs of a problem that will become significant later, and HDTEST consequently marks the offending cluster as bad. As long as HDTEST can read the data from a flaky cluster correctly once (and it tries quite hard) it will be able to save the file of which that cluster is a part intact, ______ while marking the cluster so that DOS does not try to use it again. The program was designed to minimize the likelihood of user error causing data loss on a good (or slightly bad) disk, and to be easy to use - it could not be designed to be fast, since multiple bit patterns have to be written to and read from each cluster, and this takes time. The program can be used to test single and double-sided 8- and 9- sector floppy disks (if you have plenty of patience!), but not (at ______ ___ present) AT-format 1.2Mb floppies. HDTEST's companion program, HDCHEK, simply examines the logical structure of the device and reports on what it finds. It does not write to the disk, and is provided principally to allow a quick and easy, but fairly reliable, check on the compatibility between HDTEST and a given software/hardware configuration. In general, if HDCHEK ___________ runs successfully on a system, then HDTEST can be expected to do so, although the latter program does require more memory. The HDTEST package is distributed as "User-supported Software". If you find it useful, you are asked to become a registered user by sending a completed copy of the Registration Form (which is included in this documentation), together with a check or money order for $30.00 ($40.00 Canadian, L25.00 Sterling) to me at the address which appears on the form (and on the program's copyright screen). I will send you a personalised copy of the latest, considerably enhanced, version of the HDTEST package (V3.00), and register you for a year's support. Page 2 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ Registration entitles you to be notified of upgrades, bug fixes, newly discovered incompatibilities, etc., and to ask for (and get) necessary help in adapting the program to work on your hardware. I cannot guar- antee to make HDTEST work with every possible combination of hardware and software, but I will promise to try to solve problems as they come up, and I will return your registration fee if I cannot support your system. Support will be available TO REGISTERED USERS ONLY by mail, ________________________ BIXmail, Compuserve EMail and, for an experimental period, telephone. Please also bear in mind that my willingness and ability to continue to support and enhance these programs will be directly dependent on your willingness to pay the registration fee and (to some extent) inversely dependent on the number of questions I get that could be answered by reading the documentation(!). The HD programs were written principally in C, compiled by the Microsoft C compiler (Version 4.00) using its "small" memory model, and linked with code from the distributed Microsoft C object libraries using the Microsoft LINK program (Version 3.51). Additional assembly language routines were assembled by the Microsoft MASM Macro Assembler (Version 4.00). Portions of the distributed program are consequently Copyright (C) by Microsoft Corp., 1985, 1986. All rights reserved. These portions are used under the terms of a license from Microsoft Corp. The HD programs were written with care and have been extensively tested on a number of different systems. I cannot, however, give any guarantee as to their performance on a specific system, nor can I accept liability for any actual or consequential loss resulting from their use. The programs may only be used and/or copied in their original form. Unauthorised modifications and/or the use of all or part of the programs in other software, commercial or otherwise, are strictly prohibited. GETTING STARTED _______________ This section gives step by step instructions for running HDCHEK and HDTEST on the C: drive of a standard IBM PC, XT, or 100% compatible. The following sections go into much more detail about some of the program's features and options, and should help to explain and let you deal with any problems which you may encounter. 1) If you obtained a copy of the HDTEST package on a floppy disk, use the DISKCOPY program to make a duplicate of it, put the original away in a safe place, and use the duplicate as your working disk. If you downloaded the package to your hard disk, make sure that you have a backup copy on floppy disk or tape before proceeeding. 2) Make sure that you have current backups of all the files on the disk on which you plan to run HDTEST. This is particularly important when running the program for the first time on a new system. 3) Run DOS's CHKDSK program on drive C: and correct any errors reported by it before proceeding further. 4) Make the drive and/or directory which contains HDCHEK.EXE and HDTEST.EXE your current drive and/or directory. Page 3 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ 5) Insert a formatted, non-write-protected floppy disk in drive A. A log file called HDTEST.LOG will be written to this disk - any other files on it will be undisturbed. 6) Give the command: "HDCHEK C:". After a certain amount of disk activity has taken place, and certainly within a minute or two, your screen should look like one of the examples given in the Appendix. If any errors are reported, DO NOT PROCEED until you have read the rest ______________ of the documentation and/or are sure you know what is going on. 7) If HDCHEK reported no errors, give the command "HDTEST C: A:". ____________________________ After some disk activity, the program will prompt for replies to three questions - press <Return> in response to each prompt. The program will report its progress to the screen and will record any problems encountered in the log file on the floppy disk. Depending on the size of your DOS partition and the access time of the disk, a complete run of HDTEST will take between 2 and 5 hours. Your intervention will only _____ be required if a bad cluster is found in a "hidden", "system", or write-protected file, when you will be asked to approve remapping; otherwise, bad clusters will be automatically remapped. HDTEST can be aborted at any time by pressing <Esc> and responding to the "Are you sure...." prompt by pressing <Return>. 8) If HDTEST finishes testing without finding any bad clusters, it will simply record that fact and the finishing time in the log file and return to the DOS prompt. Otherwise, when read/write testing has been completed, you will be prompted for permission to complete the remapping process by updating the disk FATs and Directories. Pressing <Return> will allow this to take place, and you will then be returned to the DOS prompt. 9) If HDTEST reported and remapped some bad clusters, see the section on "Dealing with bad clusters" later in this documentation. Page 4 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS ________________________________ HDTEST and HDCHEK make a number of assumptions about the environment in which they are operating. They will, generally speaking, abort with an informative error message if they find one of these assumptions to be untrue! They require MS/PC-DOS 2.x or above and (for HDTEST) up to about 256 Kb of free memory (the exact amount required depends on the characteristics of the device being tested) to run - the presence of more memory may (slightly) increase HDTEST's speed when testing devices with large cluster sizes. The device to be tested must have been initialized by FDISK and FORMATted by the DOS utility; only the DOS partition of a multi-partition disk will be tested. For this reason, if you wish to test a new hard disk which is to contain multiple partitions, you should first configure it as a single DOS partition, test it in that configuration, and then reconfigure it to its final form. The BIOS handler for interrupt 13 must be capable of handling (at least) normal disk reads and writes (sub-functions 2 and 3) in a way that is compatible with that documented for the XT disk adapter in IBM's technical documentation. This should be no problem for most disk systems on IBM PCs and most compatibles. HDTEST may not, however, be usable with non-bootable hard disks and/or with hard disks which require special device drivers to be installed. If run under DOS 3.0 or above, HDTEST attempts to locate and use the ROM BIOS INT 13 entry point, rather than the normal INT 13 vector (which DOS 3.x intercepts and interferes with). For this purpose, the program assumes that, if a ROM is present at absolute address C8000H, ___________________ it contains the hard disk BIOS and has initialization code starting at ___ offset 3. This assumption is true for all hard disks which "plug in" to the IBM PC and XT. It may not be true for all clones which come with hard disks installed, although it is likely to be true for most of them. The AT and some of its clones have no ROM at all at this location, which is OK, too (but see para 5 in the "Limitations and Restrictions" section). Problems (up to and including system halts) may occur if there is a ROM at C8000H but it does not control the hard __ ___ disk, and are almost certain if the initialization code does not start at offset 3. If you have any problems running HDCHEK and HDTEST on such systems, try invoking the programs with the /D flag (see below). Note that, since HDTEST remaps bad clusters to free space, there is not much point in running it on a disk which has none (as shown by DIR or CHKDSK), since it will abort immediately if it finds a bad cluster. Unless you have a really flaky disk, however, you should not need more than a couple of hundred Kb free to remap any reasonably probable number of bad clusters. ANSI.SYS should be installed on those systems (including IBM PCs) which do not support ANSI screen I/O in Video BIOS - nothing terrible will happen if ANSI.SYS is not installed, but the screen display will be very strange (!!). I will consider distributing a version which uses the IBM Video BIOS as well if there seems to be a demand for it. Page 5 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ LIMITATIONS AND RESTRICTIONS ____________________________ The current version of HDTEST has a few limitations, most of which result from the way data is stored internally by the program. None of them are "etched in stone", although some could only be avoided at the cost of slowing down what is already far from a fast process. The known limitations are as follows: 1) Maximum number of clusters per disk = 24,000 (this number is approximate, because it depends on dynamic memory allocation). This limit may be increased to 32,768 in a subsequent version of the program. 2) Maximum total number of directory and subdirectory entries (files plus subdirectories) = 3,640. I expect this restriction to be removed in a subsequent version of the program. 3) Maximum cluster size = 65,535 bytes. I do not believe that a DOS disk can ever have clusters larger than 64 Kb, but my limit is one less than that and may, since sector and cluster sizes tend to run in powers of 2, effectively limit cluster size to 32 Kb - this should be enough for most people!. 4) Because of certain limitations of the chips used to support direct memory access (DMA, the method used to transfer data from disk to memory and vice versa), HDTEST may be unable to use free memory efficiently when cluster sizes are large. This can result in "Insufficient Memory" or "Memory Allocation" errors, even on systems with more than the minimum 256 Kb of free memory prescribed above. The only cure for this is to free up (or buy!) more memory (remove RAMdisks, remove resident software, etc.). 5) This version of HDTEST will run on ATs and most AT clones, but will not be able to detect corrected ECC errors when run on these machines - a warning message will be displayed when the program initializes itself when corrected ECC errors are not being detected. The program will also not detect corrected ECC errors when invoked with the /D flag (under DOS 3.0 or above). RUNNING THE PROGRAMS ____________________ Always run HDCHEK on any new hardware/software configuration before you attempt to run HDTEST (for the first time). The latter program has been written as conservatively as possible, but it impossible to predict the behavior of every conceivable combination of hardware and operating system when dealing with a program which bypasses most of the controls which normally protect the user from destroying his world. HDCHEK is invoked with the command line: HDCHEK device [/D] "device" is the device to be tested (e.g. A:, B:, etc. - the colons are permitted but not required). The optional flag has no effect under ___ DOS 2.x. Under DOS 3.0 or above, it forces HDCHEK to use the existing INT 13 vector (which it always does under DOS 2.x), and prevents the Page 6 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ program from trying to determine the ROM BIOS entry point; the flag should be used if you know that your system's fixed disk BIOS does not follow IBM's "rules" or if the program crashes the system when invoked without it. After a short delay, during most of which the specified device will be active, a description of the device's logical structure will be displayed. After a further delay and more disk activity, a message will be printed giving the number of files and subdirectories found on the disk, and the program will exit back to DOS. Errors and problems, if any, will be reported in some detail. A number of example screen displays and log files produced by running HDCHEK and HDTEST on different systems will be found in the Appendix at the end of this documentation. Always run the DOS CHKDSK program immediately before running HDTEST on a disk. If CHKDSK reports any problems, its /F option (or other means) should be used to correct them before HDTEST is run. ____________________ HDTEST is invoked with the command line: HDTEST device1 [device2] [/D] [/N] [/P] [/Snnnnn] "device1" is the device to be tested, as for HDCHEK. "device2" (which, if present, must be different from "device1") is the name of a device on which a log file (called HDTEST.LOG) is to be written. If "device2" is not specified, errors are reported to the console terminal and ___ should not be redirected. ________________________ The /D(OS) flag has the same meaning and effect that it does for HDCHEK. The /P(rint) flag causes the log file to be directed to the PRN device (normally LPT1), and overrides any "device2" specification. The /N(o Query) flag disables the individual prompts for confirmation which the program normally issues before remapping clusters which are marked as "Reserved" or which are part of a file which is marked as "System", "Hidden", or "Readonly". The /N flag does not prevent the ___ program from prompting for confirmation before updating the disk. The /S(tart) flag causes HDTEST to start testing occupied clusters at ________ cluster number nnnnn (expressed as a decimal number). There must be no space between the "S" and the starting cluster number. This will mainly be useful when a previous run of HDTEST had to be aborted, when it allows you to start where you left off. Note that, in order to be sure that data is not remapped to a bad area, HDTEST always tests all ______ ___ empty clusters before starting to test occupied clusters. For this reason, using the /S flag will not result in a significant time saving if your disk is nearly empty, and will make the most difference on a full, or nearly full disk. After displaying its copyright message, HDTEST reads the FATs and scans the root directory and all subdirectory trees of the specified device before initiating a short dialogue. All questions are of the "Yes/No" type and should be answered by typing "Y" or "N" (case does not matter) and pressing the <Return> key. Pressing the <Return> key Page 7 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ alone is equivalent to giving the default response (which appears in square brackets at the end of each prompt). HDTEST then proceeds to test the specified device. By default, the DOS area (boot sector, FATs, and root directory) is not routinely subjected to Read/Write testing, since failures in this area usually make themselves apparent fairly rapidly. The user can, however, choose to run the full tests on the DOS area too, or to limit testing to read and seek tests only over the whole partition. In testing a block (sector or cluster), HDTEST first reads it (retry- ing, if necessary, up to five times) and then does the longest possible seek away from it before attempting to read it again. The program then sequentially writes 20 different bit patterns to the block and checks that each one can be read correctly before rewriting the original contents of the block (and checking once more to ensure that it has been restored correctly). Errors that occur at any point in this process are reported and (if the block is in the data area - errors in the DOS area are always treated as fatal) the block is remapped. If an error is detected in a "Reserved" cluster or in one that is part of a file which is marked as "System", "Hidden", or "Readonly", the user is normally asked for confirmation before the cluster is remapped, otherwise it is assumed that remapping is desirable. HDTEST keeps a copy of the FAT and a map of the device's directory structure in memory. A bad cluster is remapped by transferring its contents to a free cluster and changing all necessary FAT and directory entries so that the pointer chain which maintains the structure of the file of which the bad cluster formed a part remains valid. The bad cluster's FAT entry is altered to mark it as bad. The disk's FATs and directories are not altered until the whole disk has ______ been scanned, and then only after the user has confirmed that it is OK to proceed. This means that a power failure and/or an inadvertent power-off which occurs while the program is running will cause the loss of, at most, one cluster of data and (unless you are very unlucky ____ and it happens after you have confirmed that you want a damaged data area to be remapped and while this is being done) of no FAT or root directory information. If a power failure and/or power-off occurs while a cluster which contains the directory information of a subdirectory is being tested, part or all of that subdirectory will, of course, become inaccessible through DOS, although the data in it will remain on the disk and be potentially recoverable with the aid of (e.g.) the Norton Utilities (TM). You can safely abort the testing process part way through by pressing the <Esc> key, with no risk of leaving a partially updated FAT or directory. If you do abort the program in this way, you will be given the option of updating the disk, so that bad clusters which were detected before <Esc> was pressed can be remapped. Errors which occur in the program's initialization phase cause it to abort with an error message and (sometimes) a hexadecimal error code. The meaning of the error code is context-dependent. Errors detected during read-write testing only cause the program to abort if they occur during testing of the DOS area, or if remapping is impossible (only likely to happen if the disk is full). In any event, a description of the error is written to the log file (if any) or to the screen. This specifies the cluster or (for the DOS area) sector Page 8 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ number and the name of the affected file (if any), and defines the type of error wich occurred. HDTEST takes a very long time to run to completion because of the ____ large number of reads and writes it does for each cluster. A typical time for an XT disk (10 Mb) would be 2 hrs; full disk testing on a 30 Mb AT Plus takes at least 4 hrs. DEALING WITH BAD CLUSTERS _________________________ It is, unfortunately, not unusual for a new hard disk to have a small, ______ constant, number of bad clusters. IBM's quality control standards ________ allow, for example, 5% of the surface area of a disk to be bad (!). These bad clusters, which correspond to imperfections in the magnetic coating on the disk, will normally be detected and marked by the DOS FORMAT program and HDTEST will report them as "already marked as bad". This should not be regarded as evidence of any real problem with the disk, although some suppliers (not including IBM) will replace such ___ disks under warranty if pressed to do so. It is also not unusual for a disk to develop a few more defects as it ages. When these do ___ develop, they are also usually constant in size and position, and will be reported as "already marked as bad" by HDTEST on runs subsequent to that during which they are first found. The occasional appearance (and __________ subsequent persistence) of a new bad cluster is, therefore, not necessarily evidence of serious trouble developing. However, if more than one or two new bad clusters are reported by HDTEST, and especially if two consecutive runs of HDTEST report different bad _________ clusters, there is a good chance that the hard disk or controller is developing a serious problem - it should be backed up immediately and sent for repair at the earliest opportunity. New bad clusters in the data area are automatically mapped out by HDTEST, and no further action is necessary. Bad sectors in the DOS area can only be handled by backing up the disk (if this is still possible), reconfiguring it with FDISK so that the DOS partition starts above the bad area, re- FORMATting it, and restoring all of the old files to the new partition (which will unavoidably be a little smaller than the old). If absolute sector zero (track 0, Head 0, sector 1) becomes bad, the disk must be replaced. BUGS AND OTHER UNPLEASANT SUBJECTS __________________________________ Although, like all programmers, I sometimes like to think that my product is perfect, it is possible that there are a few bugs lurking in the depths of the program, and likely that some combination of software and hardware exists which HDTEST cannot figure out and/or cope with. If you think you have found a bug and/or if you cannot get either of the programs to work on your system, do the following: 1) Reread this documentation! Make sure that you are doing exactly what the documentation says to do. Make sure (if you are testing a drive with removable media) that the media is not write-protected. 2) Boot your system from a "virgin" DOS disk - preferably a copy of your DOS distribution disk - and try again to run the HD programs. If they run in this environment but not in your normal DOS environment, Page 9 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ try reconstructing the system under which they failed by adding things one by one until the problems recur and let me know about the incompatibility. 3) If the above approaches do not help, or if HDCHEK runs but HDTEST bombs (the reverse should never happen), send me as detailed a description of the problem as possible and (IF you are a registered _______________________ user) I will do my best to diagnose and fix it. A bug report should ____ always include a full description of the system being used, as well as ______ the output from a run of HDCHEK. CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS ______________________________ The first version released (other than beta-test versions) was V2.60. Version 2.73 (this version) - The following (visible) changes have been made in HDCHEK: 1) Minor bug in V2.60 (which resulted in a failed directory scan if HDCHEK was run on a write-protected floppy) fixed (at V2.71). The following (visible) changes have been made in HDTEST: 1) Bug in V2.60 (which could cause bad termination of the program and possible subdirectory inconsistencies if a sector which was not in use was found to be bad) fixed (at V2.70). 2) Bug in V2.70 (which caused the program to enter a terminal input loop if ANSI.SYS was not loaded and <Esc> was entered to abort it) fixed (at V2.73). 3) Internal changes made to avoid interference with expanded memory device handlers (at V2.72). 4) Ability to update disk after program terminated by user (typing <Esc>) added (at V2.70). 5) Ability to start checking occupied clusters at a given cluster number added (at V2.70). Page 10 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX - EXAMPLE PROGRAM RUNS _______________________________ Screen display from successful run of HDCHEK on 14 Mb DOS partition of 20 Mb hard disk: HDCHEK V2.73 - Copyright (1986) Peter R. Fletcher ================================================= This program is part of the HDTEST package, which is distributed as "User Supported Software". The package may be copied and distributed freely by individual users, provided that no charge is made for copying and/or supplying it. User groups and/or libraries may charge a nominal (<= $5.00) fee for supplying a copy of the package on a floppy disk. Portions of this program Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp., 1984, 1985. All rights reserved. Used under Licence. Device C: is the DOS partition of a hard disk. It contains 29104 sectors. Total partition size is approximately 14 Mb. It starts at absolute sector 8364 on the disk. There are 4 heads and 17 sectors/track. Sector size is 512 bytes. Each (12 bit) FAT occupies 11 sectors. The Root Directory occupies 32 sectors. The data area starts at DOS sector 55, and contains 3631 clusters, each consisting of 8 sectors. The directory scan was successful; a total of 1018 files and subdirectories was found. Screen display from successful run of HDCHEK on DSDD 9-sector floppy disk: HDCHEK V2.73 - Copyright (1986) Peter R. Fletcher ================================================= This program is part of the HDTEST package, which is distributed as "User Supported Software". The package may be copied and distributed freely by individual users, provided that no charge is made for copying and/or supplying it. User groups and/or libraries may charge a nominal (<= $5.00) fee for supplying a copy of the package on a floppy disk. Portions of this program Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp., 1984, 1985. All rights reserved. Used under Licence. Device A: is a floppy disk. The disk contains 720 sectors. There are 2 heads and 9 sectors/track. Sector size is 512 bytes. Each (12 bit) FAT occupies 3 sectors. The Root Directory occupies 7 sectors. The data area starts at DOS sector 12, and contains 354 clusters, each consisting of 2 sectors. The directory scan was successful; a total of 38 files and subdirectories was found. Page 11 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ Screen display from run of HDCHEK on 14 Mb DOS partition - directory structure bad or unrecognizable: HDCHEK V2.73 - Copyright (1986) Peter R. Fletcher ================================================= This program is part of the HDTEST package, which is distributed as "User Supported Software". The package may be copied and distributed freely by individual users, provided that no charge is made for copying and/or supplying it. User groups and/or libraries may charge a nominal (<= $5.00) fee for supplying a copy of the package on a floppy disk. Portions of this program Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp., 1984, 1985. All rights reserved. Used under Licence. Device C: is the DOS partition of a hard disk. It contains 29104 sectors. Total partition size is approximately 14 Mb. It starts at absolute sector 8364 on the disk. There are 4 heads and 17 sectors/track. Sector size is 512 bytes. Each (12 bit) FAT occupies 11 sectors. The Root Directory occupies 32 sectors. The data area starts at DOS sector 55, and contains 3631 clusters, each consisting of 8 sectors. The preliminary directory scan failed. Screen display from run of HDCHEK on 14 Mb DOS partition - FATs not identical: HDCHEK V2.73 - Copyright (1986) Peter R. Fletcher ================================================= This program is part of the HDTEST package, which is distributed as "User Supported Software". The package may be copied and distributed freely by individual users, provided that no charge is made for copying and/or supplying it. User groups and/or libraries may charge a nominal (<= $5.00) fee for supplying a copy of the package on a floppy disk. Portions of this program Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp., 1984, 1985. All rights reserved. Used under Licence. FATS are different FAT discrepancy at byte 20F - FAT 1 has FF; FAT2 has F8 Continue comparison (Y/N)? [Y]: n {user input} _ Device C: is the DOS partition of a hard disk. It contains 29104 sectors. Total partition size is approximately 14 Mb. It starts at absolute sector 8364 on the disk. There are 4 heads and 17 sectors/track. Sector size is 512 bytes. Each (12 bit) FAT occupies 11 sectors. The Root Directory occupies 32 sectors. The data area starts at DOS sector 55, and contains 3631 clusters, each consisting of 8 sectors. Page 12 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ Screen display from run of HDCHEK - program unable to deduce disk structure - disk not recognizable as a DOS device: HDCHEK V2.73 - Copyright (1986) Peter R. Fletcher ================================================= This program is part of the HDTEST package, which is distributed as "User Supported Software". The package may be copied and distributed freely by individual users, provided that no charge is made for copying and/or supplying it. User groups and/or libraries may charge a nominal (<= $5.00) fee for supplying a copy of the package on a floppy disk. Portions of this program Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp., 1984, 1985. All rights reserved. Used under Licence. Unrecognised media descriptor byte! - see error code Error Code = F1 {F1 is not a media descriptor byte used by DOS} Page 13 Documentation for HDTEST V2.73 Copyright 1986, P. R. Fletcher ___________________________________________________________________ Log file from successful run of HDTEST on 14 Mb DOS partition of 20 Mb hard disk: HDTEST Log File - Tue Jul 08 11:44:52 1986 Testing Device C: No bad clusters found - HDTEST finished. Tue Jul 08 14:10:41 1986 Log file from run of HDTEST on 14 Mb DOS partition - one bad cluster detected and remapped: HDTEST Log File - Tue Jul 08 11:44:52 1986 Testing Device C: Read/Write error at cluster number 275!! Uncorrected ECC error occurred during pattern read/writes This error is recoverable (no data loss has occurred). Bad cluster is in file \MYFILES\DATA5\FFT1234.DAT 1 bad clusters found and remapped - HDTEST finished. Tue Jul 08 14:01:04 1986 Page 14 REGISTRATION FORM - HDTEST V 2.73 _________________________________ Please complete this form and return it with a check or money order (no cash, please) for $30.00 ($40.00 Canadian, L25.00 Sterling) to: Peter R. Fletcher 220 Ballard Drive West Hartford CT 06119 U.S.A. None of the information on this form will be passed on to any other individual or commercial organization. Use the back of the form for comments or additional space. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This information is required to process your Registration: Last Name:____________________________ Other Names:______________________ Address:______________________________ Town/City:________________________ State:_____________ Post Code:____________ Telephone:_________________ (evenings/weekends) I understand that this software is supplied without warranty, express or implied, and agree not to hold its author liable for any direct or consequential loss arising out of my use of it. Signature:______________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are requested, but not required, also to answer the following questions: On What type(s) of computer are you using HDTEST? _________________________ CPU (8088, 8086, etc.)? __________ Amount of RAM (kB)? ____________ Type & Size of Hard Disk(s)? ____________________________________ Make and Type of Hard Disk Controller(s)? ______________________________ Do you own a Modem? Y N Are you a member of BIX? Y N Compuserve? Y N Do you own or have access to a Cauzin Softstrip Reader Y N Did you think that the $25.00 registration fee for this program was: Very Good Value? About Right? Excessively High? Are there any other utility programs that you would like to see made available as "User Supported Software"? What sort of programs?