User manual ACRONIS DISKEDITOR 6.0

[. . . ] User's Guide DiskEditor 6. 0 Compute with confidence www. acronis. com Copyright © Acronis, 2000-2002. Windows is a registered trademark owned by Microsoft Corporation. All other mentioned trademarks may be registered trademarks of their respective owners. Distribution of materials from this Guide, both in original and/or edited form, is forbidden unless a special written permission is obtained directly from it's author. [. . . ] This is done to demonstrate how data storage structures are created on a hard disk by standard means ­ for example MS Windows (or MS DOS) operating system using FDISK and/or the FORMAT utility. 3. 1 Master Boot Record (MBR) The main window of the program in the view as Partition table mode is shown below. As you can see the disk is empty and contains no partitions. Partition table As a hard disk can contain only 4 primary partitions, 4 lines on the screen are allocated for information about partitions. A hard disk partition is characterized by the following parameters: · Type, for example FAT16/32, NTFS, etc. , · Boot patch flag ­ whether partition is bootable or not, · Begin partition cylinder, · Begin partition head, · Begin partition sector, · End partition cylinder, Acronis DiskEditor 19 · End partition head, · End partition sector, · Number of hard disk sectors allocated for partition. Hard disk partitions are described in the Partition table in two ways simultaneously: (1) in CHS co-ordinates (Cylinder ­ Head ­ Sector; limited and obsolete variant) ­ coordinates of initial and end partition sectors, and (2) partition heading and its length in sectors. Each record of the Partition table contains a partition boot patch flag indicating to the main loader what partition to boot. The boot patch flag can be assigned to one partition only. At the lowest (byte) level MBR structure containing the master boot record and the Partition table can be described as follows: · Bytes 000h ­ 1BDh ­ load code of active partition's bootsector, · Bytes 1BEh ­ 1CDh, 1CEh ­ 1DDh, 1DEh ­ 1EDh, 1EEh ­ 1FDh ­ partition records, · Bytes 1FEh ­ 1FF ­ Partition Table signature equal to AA55h. 3. 2 Creating Primary Partition Using the FDISK utility supplied with your Windows operating system (enabling large disks support), we will create the Primary partition at a 0. 97 Gb capacity (or 1000 Mb) on the selected hard disk. To see changes in the Partition table contents, select the hard disk with the newly created partition for viewing. If we select the created partition for working, the Partition table will be unavailable for viewing. The Partition table contains information about the entire hard disk. If you select a disk partition for working, DiskEditor will allow you to browse only the space allocated for that partition, and accordingly, to look at its information only. 20 Chapter 3 : Main Window View Modes The creation of a hard disk primary partition will immediately update the Partition table. Primary partition Creating 1000 Mb primary partition on the disk results in filling the 1st line of the Partition table. You can see partition parameters on the figure. Partition contains 2048193 sectors total and is of FAT32 type (or 0Bh in hex). Please note that Enter button to the left of Partition type field is enabled; clicking it you can quickly proceed to partition specified by the Partition table record. You must be extremely careful when changing partition parameters. One can easily completely destroy information stored on the disk. The best way to master DiskEditor capabilities is with an old disk, without important information, that can be used for creating and destroying partitions, formatting and performing any experiments. Please do not experiment with your work disk! Acronis DiskEditor 21 To work with a hard disk you must know where and what data is stored on it. As a complete disk editing program, DiskEditor allows you to create a complete partition on a disk without the use of the FDISK utility (or any other utilities). DiskEditor is also capable of much more: while the FDISK utility allows you to create only FAT16/32 partitions, DiskEditor allows you to create partitions for almost any types known. Look closely at the Partition type dropdown list. Partition types supported by Acronis DiskEditor This list also contains a substantial group of partition types, that may seem exotic to some users. 3. 3 Formatting a Partition We now use the FORMAT utility, also supplied with Windows operating system, to format the created primary partition with /S option that allows to transfer system files to partition: FORMAT C: /S (The disk can have another letter assigned, for example, D:. ) Formatting a partition with the FORMAT utility results in the creation of partition bootsector contents. The following modes allow you to view a bootsector: as FAT16 bootsector, as FAT32 bootsector, and as NTFS bootsector. You should keep in mind that simple selection of a view mode does not automatically result in positioning DiskEditor to a partition bootsector. [. . . ] The number of folder entries is unlimited as well, though it's indirectly limited by the maximum file (folder) name length counted off from the root folder. 3. 5. 4 Files with Long Names Everything described above represents the classic way of describing files with names in «8. 3» format in FAT folder. But all Windows version after Windows 95, support long file names (up to 255 chars), allowing almost any chars in Unicode encoding. This is handled by simply allocating not one, but several adjacent 32-byte elements for each file in a folder. The number of elements used for a long name depends on its length. [. . . ]