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COMPUTER BITS
BY JASON COLE
Norton Utilities Version 2: hard
disc maintenance for your PC
When it comes to taking care of a hard disc
drive, Symantec’s Norton Utilities does the
job and more. This month, we take a look
at the Disk Doctor utility in Norton Utilities
Version 2 for Windows 95.
Version 2 of the Norton Utilities is
“OSR 2 Aware”. This means that if you
are running Windows 95 OSR 2 with
a 32-bit FAT (file allocation table),
then this version of Norton Utilities
is fully compatible. Before Version 2,
a small box would appear each time
you started Speed Disk, warning that
data could possibly be lost if you went
ahead. And if you did take the risk
and go ahead, Speed Disk would not
optimise the swapfile.
Norton Utilities Version 2 over-
comes that problem. And, of course,
Version 2 is backwards compatible
with Windows 95 OSR 1.
Useful utilities
Essentially, Norton Utilities V2 is a
collection of useful utilities for maintaining your hard disc. These utilities
include Image, Norton Disk Doctor,
Norton System Doctor, Space Wizard,
Speed Disk and UnErase Wizard, to
name just a few that are available.
All are useful and, over the next few
Fig.1: this is the dialog box that appears when you boot Norton Disk Doctor. You
can choose which disc(s) to diagnose and whether or not to automatically fix
any errors that are detected.
76 Silicon Chip
months, we shall take a closer look at
some of them, beginning this month
with the Disk Doctor which allows
you to check your hard disc drive for
errors and to fix any problems that
are detected.
Maintaining data
As we all know, the most important
thing you can do with your hard disc
drive is to maintain the data in an orderly and reliable format. To do this,
we use two programs from Norton
Utilities package: Disk Doctor and
Speed Disk.
Disk Doctor is a versatile little program in itself and checks the hard disc
for errors, including file allocation
errors and hard platter errors. To run
Norton Disk Doctor, you simply click
Start, Programs, Norton Utilities and
Norton Disk Doctor. Disk Doctor will
now load and a box similar to Fig.1
will appear.
After that, you simply select the
drive(s) to be tested. I find it best if
you don’t automatically fix errors. If
you select the automatic fix and there
is a problem, you may not be able to
see what file was damaged. It could
be a rather important file that you
could still use but once Disk Doctor
has altered it, you may not be able to
use it again.
If Disk Doctor does find a file that
contains errors, stop the program and
copy the file to another directory and
test it to see if it still works. This goes
for all files from text documents to
C++ programs. There are more options
to play with and clicking on the Options button in the first window will
let you change them.
Fig.2: clicking the Options button at Fig.1 brings up this dialog box
which has four sections to choose from. These sections let you set
Norton Disk Doctor up the way you want it.
When you click the Options button,
a new window will appear – see Fig.2.
There are four sections to choose from
here: General, Appearance, Surface
Test and Advanced.
In the General section, you can
choose to have Disk Doctor run on
start-up. This is a nice option but
can be a waste of time in many cases
(I generally prefer to check my drive
once a week). You also have the option
of being prompted for repairs or ignor
ing any errors. The Custom Repair
Options box (Fig.3) lets you choose
how problems are to be repaired –
either “Auto-Repair”, “Ask Me First”
or “Skip Repairs”.
Surface test
The Appearance section sets how
the program will look and even sound.
That’s right, you can play music while
fixing the drive (an interesting option
although I never use it).
The Surface Test section is used
to determine how the surface test is
organised. A full surface test can take
quite a long time on large hard disc
drives, so surface testing is not done
often. When you do run it, you can
choose several options such as the
number of “passes” it does; eg, will
it test the drive once, 999 times or
continuously.
Continuous testing would usually
Fig.3: this repair options dialog box lets you
specify how problems are to be repaired – either
“Auto-Repair”, “Ask Me First” or “Skip Repairs”.
only be carried out to test a particular
hard disc drive’s reliability, as it keeps
working the drive non-stop.
There are two types of testing: (1)
a “Thorough” test; and (2) a “Normal” test. The Normal test will do
everything except a surface test. A
Thorough test, on the other hand,
includes sur
face testing and takes
much longer to perform. This is because, depending on which option
you choose, it may test every block
on the hard disc drive.
The surface test options are
straightforward. You can either
choose to perform a surface test on
the entire disc or just the areas used
by files. Note however that if there
is a bad block on the drive, you may
miss it by not testing the entire drive.
The last Option in this section is
what I like to call the “show me where
I am map”. This means that a “map”
will appear and show you what is
happening. It doesn’t really do much
but it gives you something to look
at and helps translate the progress
percentage into something a bit more
readable.
The last section is the Advanced
Tip Of The Month
If you have a Windows 95 keyboard, it is quite often quicker to use the
keyboard to open a program than it is to use the mouse.
A Windows 95 keyboard has 104 keys instead of the standard 101 keys.
If you look closely at the three extra keys, you will find that two carry the
Windows logo. By using these keys in conjunction with certain characters,
you can quickly achieve the following:
(1) Windows Key + E opens Explorer;
(2) Windows Key + F opens Find;
(3) Windows Key + M minimises all open windows; and
(4) Windows Key + R opens the Run window.
These shortcuts are predefined in Windows 95 and you do not need a
special driver to run a Windows 95 keyboard.
January 1998 77
Fig.4 (left): Norton Disk Doctor gives
a progress report as it diagnoses each
disc. Here, the partition table, boot
record, file structure and directory
structure have all passed testing and
the surface test has progressed 5%.
The compressed disk indicates an
error because disc compression is
not used on this particular computer,
which means that Disk Doctor cannot
test for compression.
Fig.5: after testing is complete, you should see
a report similar to that shown here (provided
everything is in order that is).
area. In this area, you can skip certain
tests that may be incompatible with
Norton Disk Doctor.
For example, if you use a third party
drive compression utility, Disk Doctor
may not be able to test it correctly.
In this case, you would select the
“Skip Compression Testing” option
before continuing. This is important
because Disk Doctor may try to fix
what it thinks is an error and thus
cause problems. This is one reason
why it’s usually best to use the disc
compression utility that is shipped
with Windows 95.
Finally, you can set the “Background Operation” so that it will start
after a predefined period and display
an alarm by emitting an error beep
and/or flashing the Taskbar. When all
78 Silicon Chip
Fig.6: clicking the Details button at Fig.5 brings up this dialog box.
This shows all the relevant drive characteristics and totals and will
also show what errors (if any) were encountered.
the Options have been set, click OK
to save your settings.
Testing
Now we come across the actual
test. Simply click the Diagnose button
(Fig.1) and Disk Doctor will now test
the selected drives (see Fig.4). As
you can see from this example, the
com
pressed disc test indicates an
error. This is because I am not using
any compression and therefore Disk
Doctor cannot test for compression.
After testing, you should hopefully
see a report similar to that shown in
Fig.5 (ie, no problems). If you want
to know more, just click the Details
button. This will bring up a dialog box
similar to that shown in Fig.6. This
shows all the relevant drive character-
istics and totals and will show what
errors (if any) were encountered. If
you like, you can even print out the
results for your records or perhaps for
insurance purposes.
And that is pretty much all there
is to running Norton Disk Doctor. If
an error does occur, then think about
what to do next. Disk Doctor will give
you some options but in the end it is
up to you to choose what to do. If it is
just a file allocation error, then you can
fix it and save the lost clusters to files.
However, I do recommend that you
always use a recovery disk. Just before
Disk Doctor performs a repair job, it
prompts for a disc to save the current
setup. This way, you can easily go
back to where you were if things go
horribly wrong.
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