Step 2 -- Diagnosing the File System
Once the drive geometry is finally correct it is time to diagnose the drive. Use the mouse or the hotkey 'D' to begin this process. The following screen will be displayed.
This screen is displayed during the partition table testing phase of the software. The PID the current working drive id and should always be 80. The H, S, C fields are the drive head, sector, and cylinder geometry respectively. The rest of the data is:
PTS Number: The current partition being scanned. An NT drive may have multiple
partitions.PTS LBA Sector: The LBA sector where the current partition is stored.
Scan Sector: This is where all of the work is displayed. If Drive Master for NT has
determined that the partition data has been damaged then the software initiates a drive scan to determine the original drive settings. Depending upon the amount of damage and the size of the drive, it may take several minutes to finish this scan. The sector that Drive Master for NT is displayed in this field as a prompt to let the technician know that something is being done and the drive, or system has not locked up.Drive Master for NT has the capability of determining the file system type for each logical drive found in a partition. However, there are some occasions when the file system is so damaged that the software cannot make this determination. If this happens then the following screen will be displayed.
Just choose either FAT or NTFS for the FAILED file system type then click on 'Okay'.
As you can see in the above figure the Okay' button in the Partition Typing and Testing screen is grayed. This is because the screen is working. Once the partition scan is finished the 'Okay' button will be displayed with the 'O' highlighted in blue and the rest of the text in black. Just click on it and the diagnostic will continue to the OS Boot Record test.
Each partition will have at least one logical drive. Each logical drive has an OS Boot Record. Drive Master for NT tests each one of these to ensure integrity. The following is a synopsis of the fields for this phase of testing.
PID: Physical Drive ID. Should always be 80
File System: File System Type. Should always be NTFS or FAT 16
Finally the Time Remaining field is used when the OS
Boot Record is corrupt and must be rebuilt by the software.(all
rebuilds are done in memory at this point - nothing is written to the disk until
later) This process may take just
a few minutes or over an hour. The factors determining the length of time
for the rebuild are file system type, drive size, partition size, drive speed,
system type and so on.
Once the scan and rebuild, if necessary, are complete it is time to move
onto the repair phase of the software. Just click on 'Okay' to
bring you back to the main menu bar.