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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.
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Chapter 5. Diagnostics using PC-Doctor for DOS
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