READ MY DISK! (ver 1.3) Advanced Version Copyright 1988 By R. Harriman All Rights Reserved Direct All Inquiries To; DairySoft Custom Software 72 Crestmont Road Bangor, ME 04401 (207) 945-3500 LICENSE TO USE THIS PROGRAM This program is NOT in the public domain. To use this program you MUST REGISTER as described in the REGISTRATION section on the next page. Failure to register within 30 days will terminate your license to use this program. Subject to the registration provision you are granted a license to copy and distribute this program provided that you do not sell it, and that the recipient is informed that he/she must register their copy. This license is also subject to the provision that all support for the software will be done by mail or at the expense of the user for phone, travel, lodging, etc. All support will be provided in the English language. Support contracts are available on a individually negotiated basis. The license is subject to the understanding that this manual and the software MAY contain errors and that the author or DairySoft Custom Software will not be held liable for any damages resulting from the use of this software. The software and manual are provided AS IS. This license is for one computer only. If you wish to use it on more than one computer you must request a multiple site license as described in the REGISTRATION section. REGISTRATION To use this program you must register with the company shown below; DairySoft Custom Software 72 Crestmont Road Bangor, ME 04401 Your registration is NECESSARY for several reasons. 1) It provides us with an address to contact you should a problem be discovered in the software. 2) If you need support for the software it will only be provided if you have registered. 3) Each year we have a drawing from the names of all the people who have registered that year. The people chosen get to choose from a wide variety of software (games, utilities, integrated packages, etc.) from many of the famous software manufacturers. We give away hundreds of dollars worth of software to several different winners. Single User If you will be using this program on only one computer you can register by sending a check for $25.00 to the address shown above. Please include your name and address. Multiple Site Users If you wish to use this program on more than one computer you may register by sending the following items to the address shown above; 1) A letter stating your name (business or school), address, telephone number and the number of computers you will be using this program on. 2) Include a check for payment at the rate of $25.00 for the first computer and $10.00 for each additional computer. Multiple site users will receive one entry into the drawing for each computer registered. GENERAL DESCRIPTION This program is designed to recover ASCII data from a floppy or hard disk that has been severely damaged. This damage can be in the form of missing File Allocation Tables, missing Directories, deleted files, magnetically damaged disks, disks with holes in them or disks that have been contaminated in any way. The data that is recovered from the damaged disk is written to ASCII files on another disk. This undamaged disk can then be read, edited and formatted by a word processor or text editor. WHO NEEDS THIS PROGRAM? If you are a journalist, author, student, businessman, secretary or anyone who uses a word processor extensively, then you need this program. If you work with ASCII based databases or programs that store their data in ASCII files then you need this program. There are a lot of data recovery programs on the market. Most of them are designed to fix whatever is wrong with your disk so you can recover the lost data. If the disk cannot be fixed then the data cannot be recovered. READ MY DISK! assumes the worst. It assumes that the disk cannot be fixed. It will read every sector on your disk and write whatever it finds to ASCII files that you can edit as you desire. The only time READ MY DISK! will not recover your lost data is when the disk has been formatted. Your computer's disk operating system alters the disk in such a manner that no program on this planet can read it. Some programs advertise that they can recover data from a formatted disk. What they mean is that they can recover data that was on a disk formatted with their program. The format program provided with your DOS will destroy all data permanently. EQUIPMENT REQUIRED A IBM PC* or PC compatible with at least 256K RAM. Two floppy drives or one floppy and a hard drive. A 80 X 25 monitor. FEATURES 1) Reads every sector (or group of sectors that you select) on the entire disk into files containing all data found or ASCII data only. 2) Allows you to preview the disk to determine which sectors you wish to retrieve. 3) You specify the size of the ASCII files so your word processor or text editor can handle them. 4) Reads ASCII text files that use high bits such as WORDSTAR*. 5) Works on all floppy disks and hard disks up to 32 megabytes. 6) Reads even the most severely corrupted disks. If it will fit in your drive, it can be read. 7) Displays the drive being read, the drive being written to, the number of sectors on the disk and which sector is currently being read. 8) Ignores sectors without data. 9) Takes about 12 minutes to read a completely full 360K floppy disk when used on a 4.77 mhz machine. !!!!!!!!! USING THE PROGRAM !!!!!!!!! There are five steps that you must follow to use this program properly. They are; 1) Make a backup of the disk to be read. 2) Load the program. 3) Set the parameters. 4) Read the disk. 5) Edit the ASCII files on the target disk using your word processor or text editor. BACKUP THE DISK TO BE READ (Step 1) Use the DISKCOPY.COM program provided on your DOS disk to make a backup copy of the bad disk (floppy disks only). Use the backup copy as the disk to be READ. This will allow you to have the original should you make an error and damage the backup disk. If the disk is too badly damaged you may not be able to make a copy. LOADING THE PROGRAM (Step 2) The program RMD!.EXE must be copied to a formatted floppy disk and should contain only this program. Hard disk users should create a separate directory for this program and copy RMD!.EXE to that directory. Hard Disk Users Go to the directory containing RMD!.EXE and type RMD! then press the Return or Enter key. Dual Floppy Drive Users Place the disk to be read in one drive and the disk with RMD!.EXE in the other drive. If RMD!.EXE is in drive B go to the B> prompt (or A> if it is in the A drive) and type RMD! then press the Return or Enter key. The program will be loaded and a screen will appear that will allow you to set the parameters for this program. SETTING PARAMETERS (Step 3) Read From; Press the letter on the keyboard which corresponds with the drive that contains the disk to be read. Do not press the Enter or Return key. Pressing the Esc key will end the program. What Type Of Read? Place an X in Read All Data if you wish to read the ENTIRE contents of the disk. Press the spacebar to go to the next option. Place an X in Read ASCII Data if you wish to read only the ASCII characters from CHR$(32) to CHR$(122) and the formatting characters (9,10,12,13). THIS SELECTION ELIMINATES ALMOST ALL GARBAGE WHILE RETAINING THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT FORMAT! Press the spacebar to go to the next option. Place an X in Read & Translate Data if you wish to translate all high order ASCII characters for WordStar and some other word processors into low order ASCII characters. Once the characters are translated only the characters in Read ASCII Data (see above) are saved to the new disk. If you do not select one of these three then the program automatically selects Read All Data. Pressing the Esc key will back up to the READ FROM box. Target Drive; Press the letter on the keyboard which corresponds with the drive that contains the disk to be written to. Do not press the Enter or Return key. Pressing the Esc key will back up to the WHAT TYPE OF READ box. Maximum File Size; Type in a number that is smaller than the maximum file size your word processor or text editor will handle. If you do not know then type in 64. All files that are written to the target drive will be less than the size you specify. To erase a number that you have typed or press the Alt key and the C key at the same time. When you have the correct number typed in press the Return or Enter key to continue. Pressing the Esc key will back up to the TARGET DRIVE box. Changing Disks If you have specified a floppy drive as the target drive you will be allowed to remove the program disk at this time and put in a blank, formatted disk. STARTING THE READ PROCESS (Step 4) At this time you should be looking at the Parameters screen and there should be four choices showing at the bottom of the screen. F2 Read Entire Disk-F4 Select Sectors-F6 Quit-Esc Back up Back Up If you press the Esc key you will be able to back up and change the parameters. Quit Pressing F6 will end the program. Read Entire Disk If you press F2 the program will check to see that you have correctly defined the parameters. If something is not correct you will be warned and returned to the parameters screen. Make the corrections, move to the end of the parameters screen and press F2 again. Select Sectors If you press F4 you will be allowed to look at the contents of the sectors on the screen and decide which sectors you want to copy to the Target disk. See the SEARCHING AND SELECT SECTORS section for full details. Error Checking When you select F2 or F4 the program will check to see that you have selected valid drives to read from and write to. If you have not, it will beep and inform you of the specific problem. Then it will return you to the original screen to set the parameter correctly. IF THE READ DISK IS SEVERELY DAMAGED YOU WILL BE informed of this problem and will be asked how the size of the disk is described. If is described in kilobytes press the letter K. If it is described in megabytes press the letter M. You will then be asked to type in the number of kilobytes or megabytes on the READ disk. Type in the number and press Enter or Return to continue. SEARCHING AND SELECTING SECTORS When you press F4 the screen will reformat and the contents of the first sector on the READ disk will be displayed on the screen. THE CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR ON THE SCREEN ARE NOT EXACTLY WHAT YOU WILL SEE ON THE CORRECTED DISK! The screen will show the characters you selected but the page format will not be correct. The characters are shown on the screen exactly as they are stored on disk. When the information is written to the new disk it will be in the correct format. In addition the following information is also displayed; The sector at which the READ process will BEGIN. The sector at which the READ process will END. The sector that is currently displayed on the screen. Options F1 will mark the sector that is currently on the screen as the sector to BEGIN the READ process. F3 will mark the sector that is currently on the screen as the sector to END the READ process. F5 will allow you to select the sector that you want to be displayed on the screen. F7 will allow you to type in a word or phrase that you want to search for. The search will begin at the next sector from the one currently on the screen. It will stop when it finds the first sector containing the word or phrase you specified. That sector will be displayed as the current sector and pressing F7 again will allow you to select the search phrase again. F9 will begin the READ process at the BEGIN sector you specified and will end at the END sector specified. PgUp will backup and display the previous sector. PgDn will go forward and display the next sector. Esc will return to the PARAMETERS SCREEN. How To Use The Options Usually the amount of data that you have lost is quite small and it is not necessary to read the entire disk. By using the options shown above you can speed up the data retrieval process. These are the steps you would normally take to restore the lost data with the Select Sectors option. 1) An important part of your research paper has not appeared on the screen where it should have been. All attempts at restoring the data have failed. 2) Using READ MY DISK! you set up the parameters screen which instructs the program which disk to read from and which disk you want the recovered data to go to. Then you press F4 to Select Sectors. 3) When the first sector is displayed on the screen you press F7 and enter a phrase that you remember was in the first pages of your missing data. The program searches and finds the sector containing that phrase. It is displayed on the screen. 4) Using the PgUp key you page backwards through the sectors until you find the beginning of the missing text. You press F1 to mark this as the beginning sector. 5) You press F7 and enter a phrase that you remember being in the last part of your document. The sector with that phrase is displayed and you press PgDn to page through the sectors until you find the end of the missing text. 6) You press F3 to mark this sector as the ending sector. 7) You then press F9 and the program reads the sectors that you selected into text files that can be read by your word processor. You combine those text files with the original document and you are finished. READ SCREEN The Parameters screen will clear and the Read screen will appear. The following information is displayed; READING DRIVE: WRITING TO: TRANSLATE IS: TOTAL SECTORS: NOW READING SECTOR: READING DRIVE: Will display the letter of the drive being read. WRITING TO: Will display the letter of the drive being written to and the name of the file currently being written. The first file written is MYDISK1.DAT, the second file is MYDISK2.DAT, etc. Whenever the file currently being written to exceeds the maximum file size set in the parameters the next MYDISK?.DAT file is created. IF THE DISK BEING WRITTEN TO BECOMES FULL YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED BY A MESSAGE ON THE SCREEN. AT THIS TIME PLACE A BLANK, FORMATTED DISK IN THE TARGET DRIVE, CLOSE THE DRIVE DOOR AND PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE. TRANSLATE IS: Will display either ON or OFF depending on which option you selected on the parameters screen. ON will translate high bit characters. TOTAL SECTORS: Will display the total number of sectors anticipated on the READ drive. The first sector is zero. NOW READING SECTOR: Will display the sector currently being read. If some numbers pass more quickly than others it is because the sector did not contain any data and was ignored. PRESS THE LETTER E TO END THE DISK READ AND RETURN TO THE PARAMETERS SCREEN. EDIT THE ASCII FILES (Step 5) When the program has finished reading and writing it will return to the Parameters Screen. Press the Esc key and the program will end. Go to the drive designator for the drive the TARGET disk is in (A>, B>, C>, etc.) and type DIR, then press the Enter or Return key. You will see several files beginning with MYDISK and ending with .DAT. These files are in numerical order. If you were reading a 360 kilobyte drive and the maximum file size you set was 100 kilobytes you will see four files. They will be; MYDISK1.DAT - Size will be approximately 102400 bytes. MYDISK2.DAT - Size will be approximately 102400 bytes. MYDISK3.DAT - Size will be approximately 102400 bytes. MYDISK4.DAT - Size will be approximately 61440 bytes. Using a word processor or text editor load these files one at a time and view the contents. You will be amazed at what you see! Everything you put on the disk and did not write over will be displayed. It will appear even if you instructed DOS to delete it! Use your word processor or text editor to delete unwanted data and format the remaining data the way you want it. If you only needed a small portion of what was on the disk then copy it and transfer it to another file. To locate a particular section that you wanted to recover, use the search feature of your word processor to locate a particular phrase. WE WANT YOUR COMMENTS! If you have ideas on improving this product or have questions about using it please write to DairySoft Custom Software, Dept Q, 72 Crestmont Road, Bangor, ME 04401. THE END