Oddly enough, but sometimes the "fall" of the operating system does occur without user intervention. The fact is that such a deplorable outcome is greatly facilitated by the incredible recording density on modern hard drives, as well as the complexity of modern SATA interfaces. Even a backup of the system does not always save.
Introduction to the topic
The reason is damage to hard disk sectors . Such zones in the environment of professional "computer scientists" are called "Bad Sector" or "Bad Block" (from the English word Bad, that is, bad). The trouble is that the presence of such zones very often makes it completely impossible not only to restore the OS, but even to finish it with media formatting. In this case, it will be necessary to remap the “bad” sectors to “restore” them.
It is not by chance that we quoted the word "Recovery" in quotation marks. The fact is that Remap is a replacement of a bad sector with a similar block from the reserve, which is always available on all hard drives. As a rule, all this is done by system tools in a fully automatic mode, but for some reasons, some hard drives do not support this feature (automatic replacement).
Special programs
This is where specialized utilities become necessary. One of the best and most revered of them is considered to be Victoria. This wonderful program saved hard drives in the ancient times of DOS, and now many experts prefer to run it in this mode. Today we will learn how to use Victoria.
Beginning of work
First of all, you need to make a bootable flash drive. Of course, the utility traditionally runs from a floppy disk, and for this the manufacturer even offers the MAKEDISK.BAT file, but today there are almost no home drives for floppy drives on computers today.
Tips for writing a boot image to a flash drive are available on the program’s official website, so we won’t stop there.
By booting from the media (after setting the desired boot option in the BIOS), you can see the classic test interface of the program, inherited from its distant ancestors of the DOS era. We continue to learn how to use the Victoria program.
Important aspects
By default, you will be prompted to download Victoria Russian for Desktop. This version is the first in the boot line, designed for desktop computers. If you have a laptop, then select the item: ... for Notebook, and then press the Enter key.
Define the interface for connecting the disk
In the first window, be sure to press the F2 key to automatically determine the type of hard disk interface. If the program failed to do this in automatic mode, you will have to do it manually. To do this, press the P (English) key, after which a window appears with a list of interfaces. Select the desired one using the arrow keys, and then press Enter.
In general, the Victoria program in Russian was released relatively recently, so it’s better to immediately remember the English terms, since in older versions they are found everywhere.
Attention!
If you have an old hard drive with an IDE interface, you should be extremely careful about the last step. In particular, if you do not know the difference between Primary Master and Secondary Slave, it is better to shut down the program, since all your subsequent actions can lead to irreversible consequences, up to damage to the hard drive itself.
So how to use Victoria?
Getting started
As soon as you select the correct hard drive and press Enter, a message will appear at the bottom of the program window that the presets have been successfully completed. After that, press the F2 button on the keyboard. You will immediately see the passport of the selected hard drive.
To start scanning the surface of the disk, click on the F4 button. The HDD-scan menu appears. In it, you should set those parameters that will guide the program when scanning a hard disk.
By default, it is proposed to scan the entire surface of the disk (positions Start and End). If desired, you can change the value (in bytes) to the amount that you want to check. In addition, you should select the option "Linear reading", Ignore Bad Blocks and Change end of test. Plotting the schedule can also be turned off, especially since it is recommended by the developers of Victoria HDD: many users know how to use the program itself, but deciphering such information is not for amateurs.
Note!
However, in most cases, the active system partition is located at the very "beginning" of the disk, so in some cases it is quite acceptable (to reduce the scan time) to specify a smaller amount of checked disk space.
By the way, this value can be indicated not only in bytes, but also in percent, which can greatly facilitate the diagnostic procedure. In addition, in the latest versions of the program, it is possible to set the volume in gigabytes. But! For software limitations, you cannot exceed the limit of one terabyte.
Before using the Victoria program, we would recommend once again recalling the risks of inaccurate handling of hard disk partitions. Do not forget about it!
About reading modes
In addition to "Linear", you can set the "Random" mode and apply the option "Butterfly" (Butterfly). Using the last two methods, you can get much more reliable test results, but we strongly recommend not using them unless absolutely necessary. Firstly, the test time itself increases by about 10 (!) Times. Secondly, much worse, these techniques dramatically increase the wear rate of the mechanical part of the spindle disk. An old Winchester from such "executions" may simply fail.
Since you have to work with the Victoria program to extend the life of the drive, this outcome is very sad ...
No room for error
After selecting the line Ignore Bad Blocks, press the spacebar, changing the value to BB = Advanced REMAP. If you read the introductory part carefully, you already know the meaning of this term. But! If you press the Spacebar again, the BB = Erase 256 sect option will be set. This mode erases (!) Data from the hard drive! It is extremely useful in preparing the hard drive for sale, but it can play a very cruel joke with an inexperienced user ... We warn you again: before using Victoria, check everything again!
All! After pressing the Enter key, the same disk check will begin , for which everything was started. In the lower right part of the working window, the number of found bad sectors of the hard disk will be displayed. If any are found, they will be automatically replaced with reserve sectors (“Remap”).
To exit the program when finished, click on X (X). Here's how to use Victoria.