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Quick and full erase - hard drive, Quick, Full – Lenovo THINKCENTRE 8177 User Manual

Page 59: Erase, Hard, Drive

background image

channel

buffer

must

be

kept

high

in

order

to

maintain

a

speed

advantage

over

other

data

transfer

modes.

In

order

to

use

the

UDMA

channel

during

testing,

users

must

disable

the

multitasking

feature.

Destructive

versus

non-destructive

testing:

Most

of

the

tests

found

in

FDAT

are

non-destructive.

This

means

that

PC-Doctor

program

will

preserve

any

data

that

is

present

on

the

tested

media

prior

to

beginning

any

destructive

operations

(such

as

write

operations).

However,

users

can

run

certain

tests

in

destructive

mode

(i.e.

surface

scan

tests).

Destructive

tests

will

speed

up

testing

because

FDAT

does

not

preserve

the

data

on

the

media

prior

to

the

test

beginning.

Unlike

non-destructive

tests,

any

data

present

on

the

media

prior

to

the

test

beginning

is

lost.

FDAT

allows

for

enabling

or

disabling

destructive

tests,

as

well

as

specifying

a

range

of

destructive

and

non-destructive

sectors

on

the

tested

drive.

This

is

done

through

the

configuration

of

the

FDAT.INI.

If

destructive

and

non-destructive

ranges

somehow

overlap,

then

the

overlapped

area

is

considered

non-destructive.

For

example,

if

users

specify

both

destructive

and

non-destructive

ranges

as

the

same,

then

the

entire

drive

is

tested

as

non-destructive.

Quick

and

Full

erase

-

hard

drive

The

diagnostics

program

offers

two

hard

drive

format

utilities:

v

Quick

Erase

Hard

Drive

v

Full

Erase

Hard

Drive

The

Quick

Erase

Hard

Drive

provides

a

DOS

utility

that

performs

the

following:

v

Destroys

the

Master

Boot

Record

(MBR)

on

the

hard

drive.

v

Destroys

all

copies

of

the

FAT

Table

on

all

partitions

(both

the

master

and

backup).

v

Destroys

the

partition

table.

v

Provides

messages

that

warn

the

user

that

this

is

a

non-recoverable

process.

Chapter

5.

Diagnostics

using

PC-Doctor

for

DOS

53