Acronis DiskEditor Deluxe · PDF fileCorporation. All other mentioned trademarks can be...

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Copyright © SWsoft, 2001. All rights reserved.

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Distribution of materials of this Guide both in original and/ or edited form in published form (book) is forbidden unless a special written permission from the author is obtained.

Copyright © SWsoft, 2001 Acronis DiskEditor Deluxe 1

Acronis DiskEditor is a quite professional program allowing to perform any actions on a hard disk having certain qualification: to restore boot records and files and folders structure, to find lost clusters, and even to remove computer viruses’ code from a disk.

Disk editor can be used for educational purposes: one thing is to read one or several books about hard disk construction and its data storage structures, and another – is to watch this in action. But one must have a clear idea about hard disk data storage structures to perform any actions on them.

What is DiskEditor

Storing information on a hard disk

Documents are stored on a hard disk as files of various types or formats - text files in popular MS Word format, tables in MS Excel format, databases, images in JPG or GIF formats, Internet HTML documents, music records in mp3 format, video records (AVI, MOV) and very many others.

Irrespective of type of information (or data) all files are stored on a hard disk as sequences of elementary information storage units chained between themselves called hard disk clusters.

Hard disk

A hard disk is a very effective device for storing information. Modern hard disks feature huge volumes of stored information, very high record density measured in Gb (gigabytes) or Mb (megabytes) per square inch, and very high access speed to stored information.

A hard disk is an extremely reliable device. It concerns all its parts, both mechanical, and electronic. one of its parameters - non-failure operating time - may make up 20000 to 500000 hours.

Information storage errors

Despite reliability of hard disk, data stored on them is threatened by a number of factors which should be taken into account. They are both environmental (external), and those of information system (internal).

Information storage errors may be caused by various reasons: software errors (of operating system and applications), computer viruses, power supply failures. Each user knows at first hand that data files may accumulate mistakes, files may collapse, therefore applications may not be able to access them. One must pay a certain price for information processing efficiency with the help of a personal computer: to provide a computer with constant power supply, to provide an opportunity of backing up hard disk contents, to perform preventive maintenance of a disk regularly (to check it for file system errors and bad sectors, to defragment files and check for computer viruses).

Acronis DiskEditor

There are whole program complexes, allowing to inspect various computer subsystems, including disk subsystem. Disk managers included in these complexes, are capable of


defragmenting hard disks, finding and correcting files and folders structure imperfections, finding and marking bad sectors. Special utilities are capable of finding and destroying computer viruses threatening information integrity.

However, in many cases user has no choice but to try to correct an data storage error on his hard disk by himself, using one of programs related to so-called disk editors. Acronis DiskEditor is exactly such program.

Acronis DiskEditor is a professional program allowing to perform any actions on a hard disk having certain qualification: to restore boot records and files and folders structure, to find lost clusters, and even to remove computer viruses’ code from a disk

Acronis DiskEditor features

Acronis DiskEditor works under Windows 95/98/ME and NT/2000/XP operating systems family.

An especially attractive feature of this professional disk editor is its ability to loaded from a bootable diskette, created during installation, without any operating system. Because in case of any problems with your hard disk, the operating system, as a rule, is inaccessible.

The program has attractive and intuitive graphic interface with complete mouse support.

Acronis DiskEditor works with hard disks of any capacity supported by your computer BIOS (Basic Input/Output System).

Acronis DiskEditor works with the most popular personal computer file systems: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS.


Main features of Acronis DiskEditor Acronis DiskEditor offers user the full list of hard disks connected to his computer (as well as partitions). Any hard disk partition or entire disk can be selected for editing.

Acronis DiskEditor allows to work both with primary disk partitions, and the extended partitions (logical disks).

Acronis DiskEditor supports multiwindow interface allowing to work with contents of the same sector or different sectors in various windows.


The Hexadecimal mode of the main window is the general and universal work mode of Acronis DiskEditor. In this mode sectors contents are represented as a single dump (hexadecimal byte values are shown to the left and appropriate symbols – to the right). Working in this mode, a user must understand disk data storage structures (Master boot record, Partition table, File allocation table, Root folder/folder) and every byte value of these structures very well.

But bytewise access to contents of hard disk sectors not only represents the main work mode of the disk editor, but also causes some work complexities. Within the framework of Partition table, File allocation table, Root folder each sector byte (or several bytes) is interpreted differently, therefore it would be inconvenient to work with the disk editor without some set of patterns.

Work with Acronis DiskEditor is considerably facilitated by numerous additional work modes of the main window – Partition table work mode, FAT16 bootsector, FAT32 bootsector and NTFS bootsector work modes, FAT folder work mode. (Selection of view modes is performed in the View menu of the main window.)


In each additional view mode of the main window each sector byte (or group of bytes) is interpreted. For example, in as Partition table view mode the main record fields have the following values (or a hard disk partition is characterized by the following parameters):

• Type - for example, FAT16/32, NTFS, etc.,

• Boot patch flag – shows whether partition is bootable or not,

• Begin partition cylinder,

• Begin partition head,

• Begin partition sector,

• End partition cylinder,

• End partition head,

• End partition sector,

• Full amount of hard disk sectors allocated for partition.

All these fields are shown in the as Partition table view mode.


In case you worked with the Partition table in the Hexadecimal view mode, you should have had in mind that Master boot record has the following bytewise structure:

• Bytes 000h - 1BDh – a loader code of the active partition bootsector,

• Bytes 1BEh - 1CDh, 1CEh - 1DDh, 1DEh - 1EDh, 1EEh - 1FDh - partition records,

• Bytes 1FEh - 1FF - Partition table signature: AA55h.

It is, certainly, much more difficult to work with contents of hard disk sectors in hexadecimal mode.

Record fields of partition bootsector are similarly represented in the FAT32 bootsector view mode. The main bootsector fields (shown on the figure below) include:

• Sector size - disk sector size in bytes;

• Sector per cluster - amount of sectors in a cluster;

• Reserved sectors - amount of sectors occupied with a loader and reserved;

• FAT copies - amount of FAT copies;

• Media ID - carrier (disk) identifier;

• Sectors per track - amount of sectors on a track;

• Number of heads – amount of heads;

• Big total sectors - amount of disk sectors accessible to partition file system (for partitions > 32 Mb);

• FAT size - size of file allocation table in disk sectors;

• First Cluster of Root - the first cluster of a root folder.


Byte structure of bootsector is much more complex.

However, the Hexadecimal view mode allows to work with contents of any disk sector while other modes are suitable for working with very important disk structures, but occupying a very small part of it. You can work only in the Hexadecimal mode in the data field that occupies the major part of a disk.

All operations with disk sectors contents are performed in computer memory first. Then user can save or cancel made changes. This decreases risk of spoiling hard disk serviceability by unreasoned and hasty actions.


Acronis DiskEditor is supplied with excellent hard disk navigation means. They are accessible from the Search menu of the main window.

Acronis DiskEditor allows two main ways of disk navigation:

• Searching for a given line,

• Going to a disk sector according to its absolute offset.

Line search on a disk is performed by selecting Search - > Search… and entering a line to find in the Search dialog window.


The line may be entered in as text or hexadecimal values considering the necessary encoding. Search can be case sensitive or not.

You can go to the given sector by selecting Search - > Go to… and entering absolute offset of the necessary sector in the Go to sector dialog window.


You can also enter numbers of cylinder, head, and sector. In this case absolute sector offset will be calculated automatically.

Contents of any disk sector (sectors) can be saved to a file and read from it. Hence, you can save the most vital information about entire disk and its partitions: Master boot record (with Partition table), partition bootsectors, as well as any other disk data storage structures. In case any of these structures is destroyed, you can load Acronis DiskEditor from a diskette and read data from a file to restore disk serviceability.

Saving and reading files is performed by selecting Edit - > Write to file… or Edit - > Read from file… accordingly from the main window menu.

Before writing data to file you must select the necessary data block with mouse.


Before reading a data block from a file you must locate the cursor in the necessary place of a disk sector.

For more information about Acronis DiskEditor and other products of Acronis company visit our site: www.acronis.ru.

http://www.acronis.ru/

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