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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. SC