VERY VERY VERY PRELIMINARY MANUAL FOR BETA-TEST VERSIONS OF DL II!
(c) 1987 Simon Poole ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!
DL II User's Guide
I. Introduction
DL II is a checkdisk/unerase/diskedit program with following
functions:
-Disk usage display
-Check of FAT integrity
-Check for lost and crosslinked clusters
-Some disk fix functions
-Automatic and manual unerase
-File attribute change
-Disk editing, file or sector orientated
-Editing of harddisk bootsector
DL II will run on any Atari-ST model in medium or high resolution
mode, it is completly GEM based.
I (Simon Poole) make no warranty of any kind in respect to this
manual and the software described in this manual. The user
assumes any risk as to the quality and performance of this
product. In no event will I be liable for direct, indirect,
incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect in
the performance and use of this product.
GEM, AES, GEMDOS are trademarks of Digital Research Inc.
Atari, ST, TOS are trademarks of Atari Co.
MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Inc.
II. Getting Started
II.1 Running DL II
Copy the files DLII.PRG and DLII.RSC to a undamaged disk or
harddisk partition. DL II trys to uses the a filename mask of the
form DLII*.RSC to search for the resource file, so it will load
the first file fitting this specifcation in the search path. Try
this with the german resource file DLIIGER.RSC.
To run DL II double click or open DLII.PRG, if you don't want a
automatic diskcheck performed after most operations, deselect
Autocheck in the Options menu (the default value is not to
perform a diskcheck).
II.2 Terminology
A sector is the smallest entity on a disk from the view of the
BIOS (Basic Input Output System), on the ST a sector is normally
512 bytes large. Sectors are numbered from zero (normally the so-
called bootsector) to the maximum amount of sectors on the device
minus one.
A cluster is the smallest unit diskspace is allocated in for
files on the disk by GEMDOS. On the ST a cluster is normally two
sectors large.
The FAT (File Allocation Table) keeps track of which clusters are
allocated to which file.
For more information on TOS and GEMDOS disk structure read
chapter III.
II.3 Implementation Restrictions
The current version of DL II will only handle a sector size of
512 bytes and a maximum clustersize of two sectors, possibly
future versions will support a clustersize of 4 (MS-DOS
harddisks).
II.4 Command Overview
The functions of DL II can be divided into three groups: commands
which access the disk via the information in the bootsector of
the device, commands which do not need a correct bootsector and
commands that are not disk related. Do not try to use any of the
functions which use the bootsector information on a disk with a
corrupted bootsector!
Use bootsector:
Menu Disk:
View/Edit... View and edit the disk on a sector
by sector base (see II.5 View/Edit
dialog box).
Menu File:
Files... Select files for a
following operation (see II.6 Files
dialog box).
Check... Perform a diskcheck on the current
device.
These commands will also be preceded by a diskcheck, if
Autocheck is enabled in the Options menu.
Don't use bootsector:
Menu Disk:
Change Disk... Change the current device.
View/Edit Bootsector View/Edit the bootsector of the
current device.
If the bootsector of the current device has been
damaged, it may be possible to fix it with the edit
function.
Non-disk commands:
Menu File:
Chain to ReOrg... Terminate DL II and start
ReOrg.PRG, please consult the
appendix A.
Quit Terminate DL II.
II.5 The View/Edit dialog box
II.5.0 Overview
This dialog box is used by:
Disk: View/Edit, View/Edit Bootsector
Files: View/Edit, Unerase
Depending on the actual function you are using, some or all of
the buttons will be disabled. The number in the top right hand
corner tells you which logical sector/cluster you are working on.
The number is always relativ to sector zero of the current disk
or the first cluster of the file.
To leave the View/Edit dialog press or select Exit. A
point to note is that in the ASCII display NUL and @ are mapped
to space, if you want to enter these to characters use the
hexadecimal part of the display.
II.5.1 Horizontal slider
The left and right arrows decrease/increase the current
sector/cluster number by one. A single click in the grey part of
the slider bar will decrease/increase the number by 10. The
slider can also be dragged to any position.
To position the slider at an absolute position, double click the
bar and enter the sector/cluster number in the dialog box. All
elements in the horizontal slider autorepeat if the mouse-button
is pressed for a longer time.
II.5.2 Vertical slider
The vertical slider, bar and arrows work exactlly the same as in
GEM windows, with the execption that all elements autorepeat if
the mouse-button is pressed for a longer time.
II.5.3 Search function
A single click on the search button will call up a dialog box,
where you can enter the string you want to search for in normal
ASCII form (case sensitive!) or as a hexadecimal number. If a
match is found, the first character of the string is inverted for
ten seconds, a keypress or a mouse click returns you immediatly.
To continue from the current postion double click the search
button. If no match is found the last partial match is displayed.
II.5.4 Copy function
To copy a sector/cluster to a different position on the disk/file
select Copy and enter the new position in the dialog box.
II.5.5 Add function
The Add button is only used by the file Unerase function, please
consult the chapter on that.
II.5.6 Editing
To edit a sector/cluster: single click in the ASCII or hexa-
decimal part of the dialog box, a cursor will appear which can be
moved with the cursor keys, text or numbers entered will effect
both parts of the display immediatly. Press to exit from
edit mode. If you decide not to write to disk the contents of the
internal buffer will NOT be updated, so you can move to a
different part of the cluster/sector and carry on with editing.
To reread the sector/cluster from disk, double click in the ASCII
or hexadecimal part of the display.
II.6 The File menu
II.6.0 Overview
II.6.1 The Files dialog box
This dialog form works much the same as the standard GEM
fileselector, differences: all parts of the vertical slider auto-
repeat, only the actual filename is selectable. To return from a
subdirectory (folder) to its parent directory; select the '..'
entry.
II.6.2 Chain to ReOrg
If you are using DL II from the GEM-Desktop, this command will
immediatley terminate DL II and start ReOrg.PRG (if ReOrg.PRG is
in the current desktop search path).
II.6.3 Quit
Terminate DL II immediatley.
II.7 The File operation dialog
II.7.0 Overview
II.7.1 Erase
II.7.2 Unerase
[Recover would be a better expression]
II.7.3 Edit entry
II.7.4 Show fragmentation
II.7.5 View/Edit
II.7.6 Next and Previous buttons
II.8 The Disk menu
II.8.0 Overview
II.8.1 Check
Selecting the Check command will start a check of all the files
and directories on the current drive, things that are checked:
-lost clusters (clusters that are marked as used, but do not
belong to a file or directory)
-crosslinked clusters (clusters that are used by two
different files)
-bad directory entries (zero length files, first cluster out
of range)
-other catastropic errors in file allocation
Once the check is finished a dialog form will show the results of
the operation. If DL II finds something wrong with the disk
structure, it will show that in this dialog. If DL II can fix
the problem, the Fix button will be enabled. To get a printout of
the results, select the Protocol button. You will notice that bad
directory entries to not cause the Fix button to be enabled,
please use the Protocol option to find out what is causing
trouble and delete the approbiate file if necessary.
The format of the Protocol file list is:
Filename Attribute Start-Cluster Filesize Error-Message
The Fix command will truncate files to avoid crosslinked clusters
and generate files of the form 99999999.FIX (where 99999999 is an
unique number) in the root directory out of lost clusters. Since
only unused (and not deleted) entries are used, there is a limit
to the number of files that can be generated. If you have
problems with this, you can change deleted entries into unused
entries by changing the first letter of the filename from $E5 (å)
to $00, but be careful this also marks the end of used entries in
the directory!
IMPORTANT:
DON'T USE THE FIX FUNCTION WITHOUT MAKING AN IMAGE BACKUP OF THE
DISK FIRST!
II.8.2 View/Edit
II.8.3 View/Edit Bootsector
II.8.4 Change Current Disk
II.9 The Options menu
If Autocheck is enabled every time the current disk is changed or
a operation is performed which may change the disk, a diskcheck
operation is performed.
III. TOS Disk Structure
[This part will be interesting, for now have a look at:
Inside the IBM-PC by Peter Norton]
IV. Everything that DL II can do..
[Just a list of everything]
Appendix A: ReOrg, a disk reorganizer
IMPORTANT: REORG IS NOT A STANDALONE PROGRAM! YOU NEED AT LEAST A
IMAGE BACKUP PROGRAM AND A DISKCHECK PROGRAM BEFORE YOU CAN USE
IT!
IMPORTANT: ALWAYS, ALWAYS MAKE AN IMAGE BACKUP OF YOUR DISK
BEFORE RUNNING REORG ON IT!
ReOrg improves disk performance on harddisk and floppys through
better placement of subdirectories and there files on disk and
through defragmentation of the files themselves, it will also
remove deleted and zero length entries.
As the actual reorganizing is NOT an incremental process, during
the time from the start of the reorganization to the end of it
your disk is in a unusable condition (at least from the viewpoint
of the operating system). This means, that a power failure,
computer malfunction, disk error or program failure during the
reorganization will leave you with a corrupted disk!
To run ReOrg backup your disk, run the diskcheck program on it
(DL II will work ok) and ONLY run ReOrg after all crosslinked
and lost clusters have been disposed of! ReOrg has NO protection
against incorrect disks and will probably run into a infinite
loop if you do not take these precautions!
After you have run ReOrg and reorganized your disk, the computer
will reboot, this is normal and serves the purpose of
reinitilizing the TOS internal directory tree.
A verbal description of how ReOrg rebulids your disk is:
'Every (sub)directory is immediately followed by all the
files it owns, followed by all the subdirectories it is
parent of. Using the last sentence recursively, the place of
every file on the disk is determined now'
(from the Reformat manual by Jos Wennmacker)
This also implys that after you have reorganised your disk,
the amount of clusters ReOrg reports it has to move after a bit
of work on the disk will be quite large, I would recommend not
using ReOrg again before the performance of your disk actually
drops.
Appendix B: Error messages