Victoria program how to use. Recovering a hard drive using Victoria

Sometimes the operating system (hereinafter referred to as OS) crashes without any visible reasons. This is especially facilitated by the properties of modern hard drives with high density records and SATA interface. Many users for quick recovery The OS uses a backup copy, but this does not always work.
Sometimes this occurs as a result of damaged sectors hard drive!
Damaged sectors of a hard drive are called bad sector or bad block.
The appearance of bad blocks can make it impossible not only to restore, but also new installation OS. In any case, unreadable clusters have to be remapped.
What is Remap? - This is a procedure for replacing the address of an unreadable sector with one of the reserve ones. It is carried out both by a special command in the service software and automatically when writing to an unreadable sector. On some hard drive models this function may be blocked.

Reasons that cause damage to the disk surface or errors in the file system.

The reasons may be the following:

• Short-term interruptions in the power supply. But, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS, UPS) respond to such interruptions and prevent malfunctions of the HDD.
• Power loss or forced shutdown of the computer. Sometimes the user himself uses a forced power shutdown when other methods to restart a frozen OS do not work.
• Unreliable contact in HDD connectors.
• Vibration or too strong shocks that can be transmitted to the hard drive when the latter is firmly installed in the case system unit.

Symptoms of HDD surface damage or file system errors.

Symptoms may include:

• Inability to boot OS.
• Impossibility of installing a new OS over a faulty OS in Repair mode.
• Unreasonable disruption of the operating system or applications. This may manifest itself in the form of disappearance of some settings or functions of the OS and programs used.
• Launching applications and the OS itself is too slow.
• Missing files and folders.
• File corruption.
• Slowing down the process of copying and accessing files.
• The load on the processor or one of the processor cores is too high during any access to the hard drive.
• The OS freezes when trying to copy or open a file.

This page of the site is not intended to provide a complete description and capabilities of the Victoria program.
To do this, you can look, for example, at the following articles:

Various versions of the programs can be downloaded from the links provided on the RU-BOARD computer portal. Please note that the different versions of the program Victoria 3.5 are loaded into DOS, which is important if you cannot run Windows on your computer!
Program Victoria 3.5 allows the reading test to be combined with remapping. That is, if you immediately select the options “Linear reading” and “Advanced REMAP”, then you don’t need to do anything else. This is especially useful if there are too many unreadable blocks.
Victoria 3.5, for example, can be launched from a floppy disk, which can be created by running the MAKEDISK.BAT file of the V35FDD.zip archive, which can be downloaded. Unpack the archive, insert the floppy disk into the drive and run the makedisk.bat file. A boot floppy disk will be created. To use the program, you must boot your computer from this floppy disk.
You can run the program from a flash drive - see “”.
Below we will look at an example of replacing damaged sectors with working ones (Remap) by running the program Victoria 3.5 from a flash drive.

Figure 1

Upon loading, by default the menu item “Victoria 3.5 Russian for Desktop” is displayed - for personal computers. If you do not select anything, then Victoria will boot itself in 10 seconds. For laptops, use the and keys ↓ select the item “Victoria 3.5 Russian for Notebook” and press the key Enter.

Figure 2

At the bottom of the Victoria 3.5 program window that opens, we are asked to press the key P to select the IDE channel (interface) for connecting the hard drive, or the key F1 to call the help system. When you press a key F1 The following window opens:

Figure 3

Having familiarized yourself with the purpose of the function keys of the Victoria 3.5 program, by pressing any key, we exit the help system (for more details, see: Purpose of all involved keys).
In the first window of the Victoria 3.5 program (Figure 2), you can immediately press the key F2 to display the disk passport. If the Victoria 3.5 program itself detects the hard drive, the hard drive passport will be displayed. If after pressing the key F2, the program itself did not find the hard drive, then you will have to do it manually. To do this, press the key P. The same will have to be done if the system has several hard drives and you need to select one of them.

Figure 4

On key press P The HDD port selection menu will appear. If you have hard drives with a SATA interface, then in the “Select HDD port” menu that appears, select “Ext. PCI ATA/SATA". We move using the cursor keys “↓”, and confirm the selection by pressing the key Enter.

Figure 5

In the table, select the desired channel according to the hard drive model. For example, enter the number “1” and press Enter.

Figure 6

At the bottom left we will see “Completed”.
Then pressing the key F2 you can see the passport of the selected hard drive....
Let's return to the case if you have hard drives with an IDE interface.

Figure 7

Select Primary Master; Primary Slave; Seconday Master or Seconday Slave, depending on the position of the jumper (Master/Slave) and the type of connection (Primary/Seconday) of your hard drive.
We choose, for example, “Primary Master”. We move using the cursor keys and ↓ , and confirm the selection by pressing the key Enter.

Figure 8

On key press Enter A message about the selected hard drive will appear at the bottom of the window. Then press the key F2.

Figure 9

The passport of the selected hard drive opens.
Next, to set up a check (scan) of the disk surface, press the key F4.
“HDD scan menu:” appears

Figure 10

In the default menu that opens, we are offered hard drive scanning options:
Start LBA: 0 - start of scanning (start of hard drive)*;
End LBA: 40188960 - end of scanning (end of hard drive);
Linear reading;
Ignore Bad Blocks;
Change end of test;
Graphic: OFF.
We move through the menu lines using the cursor keys and ↓ , change the value with the key Space(space), and confirm the selection by pressing the key Enter.
For more information about menu items, see “Online documentation: Sergey Kazansky”
*LBA (Logical Block Addressing) - block address. When setting testing boundaries in LBA, - 1 LBA = 512 bytes.
You can do the math: 40,188,960 x 512 = 20,576,747,520 bytes, which equals 19.16 GB.
That is, by default it is proposed to scan the entire disk “Start LBA: 0” and “End LBA: 40188960” (from beginning to end of the disk with a capacity of 19.16 GB). Of course, you need to scan the entire hard drive.
Usually system partition drive is located at the beginning of the hard drive (drive “C”). Therefore, sometimes, to reduce the time it takes to identify a computer malfunction, you can select a test location on the hard drive that corresponds to the size of the partition on which the operating system is installed.
For such cases, it is possible to set scanning boundaries not only in LBA, but also in G (gigabytes are written here with the letter G) and in %!
The value of the start and end boundaries of hard disk scanning can be entered here in percentages or gigabytes, but only in integer values.
Example: 14G or 73%.
This feature will also be useful in cases where you have a large disk, but you should not set values ​​exceeding the limit of 1 terabyte in the Victoria version of DOS!

Figure 11

The figure shows an example of specifying the start of testing in the line “Start LBA: 0” and the end of End LBA: in 14G (14 gigabytes). To be able to enter a value, you need to press the key Space.

Figure 12

By confirming the action by pressing the key Enter, entered values ​​in G or % are automatically converted to LBA address.

Figure 13

The next default menu line is “Linear Reading”. By pressing the Spacebar you can select:

• Linear reading;
• Random reading;
• BUTTERFLY reading.

“Linear reading” is better not to change this, although the latest modes allow you to obtain more reliable data, it is not recommended to use them, since this can increase the duration of the test by 12-15 times. In addition, these modes wear out the HDD mechanism much more than “Linear reading”.

Figure 14

In the next line by pressing the key Space set “BB = Advanced REMAP”
Attention! Here you can set " BB = Erase 256 sect", which erases information on the hard drive!

Figure 15

By pressing “Enter,” the process of testing the surface begins; a report will be generated in the upper right part of the interface on the number of certain clusters that differ in access time. The lower right part of the interface displays a list of bad block addresses in LBA format. Lower reading speed and time remaining until the end of the test.

Figure 16

At the end of the test, the speaker of the system unit will emit a melodic signal.
No “Bad Blocks” (bad sectors) were found in this test!
If they are present,

Figure 17

“Remap” will be automatically performed - the procedure for replacing the address of an unreadable sector with one of the reserve ones.

Figure 18

Upon completion of the test, information about the correction is displayed, in in this case, 210 “Bad Blocks”.

Figure 19

This picture shows the result of retesting this hard drive after completing the "Remap" in the previous one, from zero to final LBA. No defects were found during repeated scanning!
Next, let's look at the forecasts. There is SMART technology (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), which allows you to monitor basic parameters HDD operation and predict the disk operating time before failure. Click F9,

Figure 20

to view SMART metrics. You can decipher SMART readings using the table - Table for decoding SMART readings. The quality of the disk surface and the reliability of the HDD mechanism can be judged by the colored thermometers located next to each indicator. Red color means that things are moving toward the death of the hard drive (except for the temperature thermometer).
If at the top of the interface it says “Smart return status: Good", then the prognosis is good.
If the fix fails, or the prognosis is poor, you will have to replace this hard drive.
Due to “poverty”, you can, of course, try to “cut off” part of the disk, but this is a separate topic...
To exit the program, press the “X” key.

Figure 21

Then with three keys Alt + Ctrl + Delete reboot the computer.

Hello friends! I often, when writing articles about errors, mention the possible malfunction of the hard drive. I also give recommendations to check our HDD for damaged sectors and its overall integrity. It doesn’t go far, here is an example of an article in which I mentioned this.

I would like to immediately introduce you to our main character of today’s article, a program for testing and verification hard drive for errors, under the title " Victoria" Why this particular utility? Yes, at least because it is very simple and understandable, and also has long proven its effectiveness and quality of work. Even in my own practice, with the help of it I have already determined very large number faulty disks, and sometimes it was even possible to restore them.

The program itself is designed for hard checks disk with an IDE or SATA interface for errors and damage. It presents itself as a utility that is completely ready for an in-depth, and most importantly, quick assessment of the technical condition of the HDD.

How to check your hard drive for errors using Voctoria

I check the HDD with Victoria using a boot disk " SonyaPE Live CD" You can download it as an ISO image. But you can also use any other disk Live CD, it’s just that my preferences settled on SonyaPE.

After downloading the archive, unpack it to any location on your computer, and . Having finished recording, insert the disc into the CD drive and the next time you reboot, go to .

Also available as a separate file “ .exe", which you can safely run and check the disk for errors in working Windows. But honestly, I cannot guarantee you 100 percent effectiveness from this method of testing. But you can try it for reference.

So, by inserting the disk and booting from it, we get to the SonyaPE Live CD menu. You will see a list of tools that you can use. Of course, most of them will be more suitable system administrators and masters of computer technology, but among them there is the same Victoria that we need today.

Going down a couple of lines with the arrow, we note “ Checking HDD Victoria 3.5.2 DOS" and confirm the choice with the " Enter" The utility will begin loading on the screen.

An interface will appear in front of you running program. Since we will only check the disk for errors, I will not talk about all the capabilities of the program. Only now, I want to immediately draw your attention to the fact that by clicking “ F1» You will open a help window where you can find a description of each button in this utility.

To get started, click " F2", which will launch automatic search and definitions of the hard drive on computers. If a message appears stating that the disk was not found, in this case we will use alternative way by pressing the " R" A window will appear on the left with a port selection.

So, if your HDD is connected to SATA then select “ Ext PCI ATA\SATA", if through an IDE cable, we try each of the remaining four options. This option is also suitable if your computer has several hard drives. Definition and selection of a port is carried out using the arrow panel and the " Enter».

If the correct port has been selected, a prompt should appear asking which channel will be used. We select the one where in the “ Drive"The name of the hard drive is indicated. For example, this is my first one, so I put “ 1 " and confirm the choice, after which a notification " Done».

Now to start the scan press " F4" A small HDD scanning settings window will open. In the first paragraph we leave “ Start LBA: 0", which means starting the scan from the very beginning of the disk. Second line " End LBA: 6986216" indicates the final stage of verification; we also leave the specified default value.

In the next line you can also leave " Linear check", which will allow you to quickly and at the same time accurately diagnose the condition of the disk. Here in the fourth paragraph, instead of “ Ignore Bad Blocks» set « BB Advanced REMAP"because with this value, when damaged blocks and errors are detected, the program will attempt to correct them, and not just skip them, as indicated in the previous mode.

To start scanning, having set all the settings as I recommended, click “ Enter" The process itself can take about an hour, depending on the speed of the hard drive.

Once you have finished checking your hard drive for errors, you will be able to see a report on the number of good and bad blocks. Everything that is colored gray and green is a normal condition. The fact that it is displayed in orange means that damage and faulty blocks will soon appear on the disk. But the last color is red, which colors “ bad» blocks, in other words, shows the number of defects on the disk. If there are a large number of them, we can say that the disk is starting to fail, or is no longer working.

I’ll also note that with 1-5 troubles “ remap“Sometimes he copes and manages to restore them. To complete the check, you need to restart the computer and eject the disk.

How to check your hard drive for errors with Victoria in a loaded Live Cd

I will immediately describe the second option for scanning the disk, if the DOS version could not find or determine installed HDD on PC. This time, after booting from the disk, select the first line “ System administrator disk SonyaPE 05/15/2010" Windows XP and the desktop will begin loading.

On the desktop we find the Victoria 4.46b b icon and launch it. A window will open to the program interface, which differs from the DOS version. By default, when opened, the tab " Standard” which gives a complete description of the selected hard drive. The main difference between this version of the program is that it detects hard drives automatically, and the entire list of drives can be viewed on the left side.

So, having selected the HDD that will be checked, click on the “ Test" A testing window similar to the DOS version will appear. Before starting the scan, I recommend checking “ Remap", which will allow you to correct errors if they are detected. And press the button Start» to start checking.

As for the bug report, it is similar to the one I described earlier, everything that is gray and green is good, orange, red and blue are bad. To complete the scan, close the window and restart the computer in standard mode.

In conclusion, I want to say that you may not always be able to restore using this utility. performance of hard disk. But I am sure of one thing for sure: Victoria will help you 100 percent in checking your hard drive for errors and diagnosing its technical condition.

The program is aimed at a wide range of PC users, and is intended for testing, service and assistance in recovering information from any hard drive with IDE and Serial ATA interfaces.
The program is completely ready-made solution for a comprehensive, deep, and at the same time the fastest possible assessment of the real technical condition of the HDD.

This program combines both professional and household functions, and allows users without special knowledge to test the hard drive.

It should be noted that Victoria only shows the physical condition of the disk.
File system defects will go unnoticed - there are tools to detect them. system utilities(eg SCANDISK, NDD).

At the same time, if data periodically disappears or becomes corrupted on a PC, and obvious physical problems- it is reasonable to assume that they are the cause of the failures.

Main features of the program

Reading the disk passport and displaying the full technical information about the drive;
. Determination of ATA/SATA controllers installed in the system (including additional ones);
. Acoustic noise level control;
. View S.M.A.R.T. drive parameters, quick assessment of its condition using pseudographic scales and the status register;
. Working with Host Protected Area: changing and restoring the physical volume of a disk;
. 5 surface testing modes: verification, reading and writing, with counting and displaying addresses of defective blocks;
. 2 modes for plotting a surface: full and estimated (similar to how done in the HD Tach program);
. Flaw detector: analysis of surface condition using 3 types of tests, with counting and displaying unstable areas, indicating the exact addresses of each unstable sector and automatically entering them into text file;
. Testing the buffer memory and interface for the presence of “glitches” and distortion of information during reception and transmission;
. Measurement of HDD shaft rotation speed, including on new disks without the INDEX field;
. Hiding surface defects by reassigning sectors from the reserve (remap) on any of the 3 tests;
. Hard drive performance measurement (benchmark function):

Measuring the speed of linear, nonlinear and random reading from the HDD;
. . Measuring HDD head positioning speed and sector access time;

Reading speed measurement graphic methods;
. Cleaning a disk (or part of it) from information - “ low level formatting»;
. Managing security options: setting a password on the HDD, removing the password, quickly erasing information without the possibility of restoring it, etc.
. Ability to stop and start the HDD spindle motor;
. HDD head positioning test (similar to how the OS does it during intensive work), in order to identify the reliability and thermal stability of the PC disk subsystem (leads to heating of the HDD);
. Sector-by-sector copying of an arbitrary HDD area to a file, skipping defective areas (can be useful for saving information from damaged disk);
. Sector-by-sector copying of files to HDD;
. View information about logical partitions HDD indicating partition boundaries (without defining the HDD in the BIOS);
. Indication of HDD operating modes, register contents, and visualization of error codes by indicator lights;
. Built-in context-sensitive help system.

Installing the program and launching it

1. Installing the boot version for FDD:

Unpack the archive, insert the floppy disk into the drive, and run the file makedisk.bat .
A boot floppy disk will be created.
To use the program, you need to boot your computer from this floppy disk, after which everything will be ready for use.

2. Installing the boot version for CD:

Unzip the archive and burn the ISO image to CD.
Boot your computer from this CD and you'll be ready to go.

3. Installing a non-bootable version on your PC hard drive:

The program consists of a single executable file and an auxiliary configuration file vcr.ini .
File vcr.ini is optional and serves to fine-tune Victoria to certain operating conditions, which allows achieving maximum convenience(for example, you can enter the addresses of an external PCI ATA controller there, so as not to select the desired screw through the menu each time), turn off the sound, disable recording to disks, etc. (details on setting up the ini file are here).

You can run the program directly under Windows, and it will work great, but for this you need to meet one of the conditions:

Disable (“Control Panel” - “System” - “hardware” - “hard drive controllers”) the IDE controller channel to which the hard drive under test is connected.
This is necessary so that the program can access the HDD ports directly.
. You don’t have to disable the channel in the system, but then when Windows boots, nothing should be connected to this channel (otherwise the OS, having found the ATA device, will block the ports).
If you choose this option, then you need to connect the hard drive after booting the system.
Or, as an option, turn on power to the hard drive under test only after full load OS (not all cheap power supplies tolerate this).
. It makes absolutely no sense to disable the hard drive in the BIOS, because modern multitasking operating systems do not use the BIOS to check the presence of a HDD on the channel.
The driver does this for him.
But if you have “clean” DOS, disabling the HDD in the BIOS will be useful so that DOS itself does not see this disk (and so that it does not use ports in this way, which theoretically can lead to conflicts between the OS and the program).

When working from Windows NT kernel systems, you must install the “UserPort” driver.
To do this you need:

Download UserPort .
. Copy the userport.sys file to the folder WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/DRIVERS
. Launch userport.exe .
A panel with 2 windows will appear in front of us.
The left window refers to the program running in a DOS window, the right window is in full screen.
By default, they contain LPT port numbers - all of them can be deleted.
In both windows you need to enter the port numbers of the secondary HDD controller:
170h-177h
376h-377h
. Add them to the “Add” list;
. Press the “Start” button;
. Press the “Update” button, then “Exit”;
. Launch Victoria.

Everything should work both in a window and on full screen.
Keep in mind that under NT systems the search for hard drives on external controllers will not work.

These theses are also basic when working with other similar programs that access equipment through ports.

Note:

The Windows XP boot floppy disk is not suitable for running the program! (due to EMM386.EXE glitches);
. A file manager such as Volkov Commander (for “pure” DOS) or FAR (for Windows) will be very useful.
It should be noted that Victoria has a small built-in file manager inside.

After launching the program, its interface will appear on the screen, consisting of the following main parts:

The top line: information about the version of the program and its author.
. Second line: indicator lights of HDD registers, allowing you to judge what the drive is doing at the moment.
. Third line: it displays the model name of the HDD being tested, its serial number and some other information.
. Bottom line: function key tips.
. Second line from the bottom: “Status Box” - displays the most current system events.
For example, error messages or waiting for the hard drive to be ready.
. The third line from the bottom is empty.
. Everything else is the program desktop.
It displays the entire process of working with the drive.

Program management

A PC keyboard is used for control; support for other input devices is not yet available.

Interface selection

Selecting an IDE/SATA hard drive on a standard port

It is possible that when you first start you will need to select exactly the hard drive that you want to test (and not the one that is written in the file vcr.ini- Secondary Master is indicated in the distribution).
To do this, press the [P] key.
A menu with channel names will appear.
The selection is made using the up and down cursor keys.

When you move the cursor, an indication (light bulbs) is displayed in real time, which allows you to judge the readiness of the HDD.
A working hard drive will always have 2 lights on: DRSC And DRDY(some may also have INX).
The error registers may have a red light on. AMNF, and the rest must be repaid.
For more information on the purpose of indicators, see below.
After placing the cursor on the desired item, press ENTER.

Selecting a hard drive on an external (additional) PCI/ATA/SATA/RAID controller

This is done at the very bottom of the menu.
After pressing ENTER, the search for external controllers and hard drives on them will begin.
Only really present and serviceable hard drives in the MASTER position will be detected; the system will not “notice” the rest.
When each additional port is found, the table will display:

The name of the ATA controller manufacturer (or its Vendor Code);
. Controller name (or its ID Code);
. Class: EXT / INT / RAID (external, internal, RAID);
. Port address (or a dash if it could not be determined);
. The name of the connected hard drive, if it is on the channel and is working;
. All found ports will be numbered.
All you have to do is select the one you need by pressing the appropriate key.

Note: The program may not find hard drives on some Promise controller models.

Recovering deleted files is not a problem; there are dozens of utilities for this. But what if the drive is damaged, has an erroneous geometry description, or is locked with a controller-level password? Then the Victoria utility comes to the rescue. It is written in assembler, takes up a few kilobytes and works directly with the controller.

WARNING

From MS-DOS to Windows 10

Victoria was conceived as a tool for advanced diagnostics of drives (then hard drives, and today also SSDs) and management of their operation settings through low-level commands. Belarusian programmer Sergei Kazansky developed it for ten years and released his own set of utilities for data recovery. During this time, many commercial releases from Victoria were released, several free versions and one unofficial one, which we will pay special attention to.

Victoria was originally a disk utility for MS-DOS, written in assembly language. The ancient operating system was better suited than Windows due to the fact that in a single-tasking environment it is easier to provide exclusive access to the disk. With the advent of support for the porttalk.sys driver version 4.xx, Victoria has learned to work in the WinPE multitasking environment, as well as in Windows from XP to 10 of any bit size. It has become easier to launch it, the actions in the graphical interface have become clearer, and the operating mode itself has changed. But here's the problem: without understanding the new features of the program, some users began to lose data and entire disks instead of restoring them. Therefore, the latest official version 4.46b has developed “fool protection”.

By default, only non-destructive operations with drives are available. This is not just a read-only mode, as in other utilities that access the HDD/SSD using the Windows driver. Victoria also blocks the ability to change the HPA (and screw up the disk geometry) at the first start, accidentally launch low-level formatting, and “shoot yourself in the foot” in more sophisticated ways.

Universal Soldier

Victoria - maximum universal utility. It addresses any type of drive (HDD, SSD, USB Flash) and any ATA-compatible interface. Its job is to transmit ATA commands to any device that supports them. Therefore, everything that has been said about Victoria’s work with disk drives This is also true for solids, with the exception of what relates to their design features. It is clear that for an SSD it is pointless to watch the spindle spin-up time and try to control the head positioning speed - it has neither one nor the other. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to test and even restore an SSD using Victoria.

Victoria 4.47

This version was made in 2013 by a programmer from Moscow Oleg Shcherbakov. He patched the latest official Victoria 4.46b build. It's better to download. On this site Shcherbakov published it along with the source codes of the patches. Other resources can distribute anything under the guise of the new “Victoria”.

INFO

Although Victoria is far from new program, there were also critical errors in it that required correction. One of them led to the fact that running Victoria in 64-bit Windows versions it was impossible. Another problem could arise when working with big disks. If the volume was higher than a terabyte, then Victoria 4.46b simply spent all virtual memory for drawing and color marking of checked LBA blocks. In version 4.47 Shcherbakov fixed all this.

PIO vs API

Victoria has two operating modes: PIO (port input/output) and API (application programming interface). In PIO mode, the drive controller is polled by the program through the porttalk.sys driver. If you select API, operating system tools will be used. Disk performance in PIO mode is reduced because DMA and high-level read and write optimizations are not supported. However, PIO mode allows you to use all the capabilities of Victoria and send any ATA commands directly to the disk controller, bypassing the OS and standard drivers. It is through PIO that they most often work with disks in data recovery laboratories. Victoria supports both drives with the modern SATA interface and the old ones - PATA (aka IDE). Victoria can work with external drives(features will be described below).

Having selected the PIO mode, at the beginning of work you need to scan the bus and identify the disk controllers using the PCI-Scan button. To the right of it, a window for selecting a disk port is displayed. Internal ones are usually detected without problems, but for external drives you will have to first find out their port. This can be done in the hardware properties or in any diagnostic program (for example, AIDA64). After this, you need to manually set the port in Victoria. Even when scanning, you can check the All dev (all devices) checkbox and use the exclusion method to find required disk in the list of found ones.

It is advisable to use the PIO mode specifically for low-level commands. A simple search for bad sectors and their reassignment to the spare area of ​​the disk is much faster (but less reliable) in API mode.

The API mode restrictions are as follows: you cannot set or remove ATA passwords; work with the Host Protected Area and viewing registers are also disabled. If any of these functions are needed, you can switch to PIO mode. It happens that PIO mode is not available. This happens when using older versions of Victoria on 64-bit OSes. Another reason could be errors in working with the porttalk.sys driver or the choice of SATA AHCI mode. There is a guaranteed way out of the situation as follows.

1. Recording bootloader
   with WinPE x86 and place the Victoria program on it by simply copying it.
2. Connecting the required drive to the SATA/PATA port, if you have not already done so.
3. Disable all other HDDs or SSDs (optional).
4. Go to CMOS setup, switch the SATA controller mode from AHCI to compatible (compatible, native or IDE).
5. Download WinPE. If necessary, we install drivers, including porttalk.
6. We launch Victoria in PIO mode, initialize required HDD or SSD and execute the required command.

Settings can be set via the GUI or in the vcr40.ini file. The same file will help to remove the blocking of work with the primary port. By default, it is enabled in order to protect the system disk from accidental modification. To be able to select Primary in the list of ports, you need to do two things:

1. Disable the “only non-destructive functions” option and close the program.
2. In the section of the vcr40.ini file, add the line Enable PM=1, save the changes and restart the program.

Porttalk

The latest versions of Victoria can automatically install the porttalk driver, but it is completely useless on 64-bit systems. The fact is that for the sake of greater security, they removed a couple of functions that are necessary for porttalk and Victoria to work. Therefore, the porttalk driver (and, accordingly, PIO mode) only works on 32-bit versions of Windows, which have the Ke386SetIoAccessMap and Ke386IoSetAccessProcess functions.

External drives

External drives are regular laptop (2.5″) or desktop (3.5″) models in containers with USB and FireWire interfaces. They are equipped with various controllers with the general name “SATA bridge”. Many of these bridges do not broadcast low-level commands. Therefore, Victoria can immediately work with some external drives in PIO mode in the same way as with internal drives, while with others you will have to suffer at first. In the simplest case, it will be enough to remove the disk itself from the case (do not open the HDA!) and connect it to the port directly.

Rare beast: SATA hard drive without SATA port

Western Digital and, possibly, other manufacturers produced some external hard drives with a soldered SATA - USB bridge. Therefore, they do not have a regular SATA connector. However, they can still be connected directly to the port by soldering a SATA cable to the pins on the drive board. To understand whether your disk belongs to such a series, you will have to google the model number and look for datasheets.

Passwords

One of the most popular low-level commands in PIO mode is working with passwords. According to the specifications, access to the disk can be limited using a password. It is set by the user from the BIOS or using external utilities. There is also a master password preset by the manufacturer. The drive can only be locked using a user password. If you have forgotten it, you can remove the lock using the master password.

Depending on the specified security level, the result of entering the master password will be different. At high level(high) the master password acts the same as the user password. It just unlocks the drive and that's it. If the maximum security level is set (max), then entering a master password instead of a user password will unlock the disk only after all data on it is completely erased (secure erase).

Working with ATA passwords is also complicated by the fact that according to the standard they always consist of 32 bytes (no matter how long you specify it). Extra characters are ignored, and missing ones are added automatically. The problem is that different programs add them in different ways. Standard security utilities on some laptops are especially guilty of this. Instead of traditional zeros (or at least spaces), they use non-printable characters. The code 00h cannot be entered from the keyboard at all (even through (ALT)+code). There is only one way out: do not enter the password in the program window, but read it from the file. Any characters can be written to a file using a hex editor.

Often the user cannot unlock the drive even when he enters the correct password. When changing a laptop or losing standard utility any other (for example, HDDL) will add up to 32 bytes to the password with its own characters.

There is also a preliminary modification of the password. On many laptops it is actually encrypted before it is sent to the controller. Usually these are protozoa logical operations, but that doesn’t make it any easier. The user thinks that this is a password he knows, while in reality the controller accepts a completely different one. If you have tried all the options for the supposed user and standard master passwords, but have not achieved any results, then there is only one way out - take the drive to the laboratory, where they will work with it in technological mode.

How to get back a lost terabyte

Sometimes the ability to work Victoria in PIO mode with HPA (Host Protected Area) - a service memory area in which the disk geometry is recorded - is very helpful. It determines the storage capacity by specifying it as the number of LBA blocks.

There was an interesting case in my practice. I received a standard complaint: “the computer does not turn on” (read, the OS does not load). The owner complained that he had been suffering for about a month. First, he visited all the service centers, then invited various Enikey people - to no avail. I came, looked and also thought deeply. All components are in good condition. The disk is detected in the BIOS, but booting from it does not work. I launched Linux from a flash drive. The hard drive is visible, but logical partitioning utilities show a strange picture: 64 MB of total volume and one partition with an unknown file system.

And then I realized that the HPA had simply failed on the hard drive. As a result, a terabyte disk began to be defined as a 64-megabyte stub. I switched the SATA port mode from AHCI to compatible in CMOS setup, took a USB flash drive with WinPE and launched Victoria in PIO mode. Next, I sent the NHPA command (restore factory volume).

Usually in such cases it is possible to instantly restore the passport value of LBA blocks, but this time the miracle did not happen. Therefore, I found a service utility for hard drives of this series and sent a similar HPA recovery command from it. A terabyte of data returned from oblivion on the next reboot.

Why did Victoria fail? I assume because this disk had some specific features unknown to me or the universal program.

Bad sectors

Most often, Victoria is used to find and fix bad sectors. If everything is fine with the disk’s HPA and there is no password protection, but no utilities can read files from it in a reasonable time, then it’s time to check the surfaces. Victoria can do this in any mode (PIO/API) using sector-by-sector reading (read), writing (write) and writing with verification (verify).

When restoring data, you can use read-only, but its options also vary. The simplest of them is sequential: from the first block to the last. The starting and ending LBA values ​​can be specified manually, which is convenient for many reasons. Firstly, this makes it possible to check disks of any size, simply by performing the test in fragments of up to one terabyte. Secondly, you can re-check the suspicious area and exclude external factors. Victoria analyzes the time it takes to access the sector. Typically, for new disks it does not exceed 5 ms for 80% of sectors. Sectors with a polling time of less than 50 ms are also considered normal. Those for which it is measured in hundreds of milliseconds are candidates for bad sectors.

If the sector was counted after a few seconds, then this is a clear bad block. The disk controller must independently identify such disks during idle time and replace them in the address table with good sectors from the reserve area. However, in practice this does not always happen. Victoria can ask the hard drive to perform such an operation (Remap) for those sectors that have not responded to requests for too long. Formally, part of the information is lost during this procedure, but in reality it was already lost at the moment when the sector became faulty.

IN paid version Victoria had the Restore function available - an attempt to read data from a bad sector at any cost and then rewrite it to a good sector. However, the program has not been officially supported since 2008, so it is unlikely that you will be able to purchase its full version. Free Victoria has come to the rescue more than once by restoring HPA, resetting passwords, and eliminating bad sectors that caused other data recovery programs to freeze.

How free Victoria saved a secret job

I'll share one more story with you. Laboratory at a research institute, our time. The analytical instrument is controlled from the computer that came with it. The computer comes pre-installed with very specific software that the developers no longer support. There is no distribution kit either on the disk or on the website. There is only an installed program, and it has stopped working. The laboratory carried out research under a multi-year government contract. Without the miracle device, the employees found themselves tied hand and foot. We struggled and found out that the problem was with the disk. From ancient times it became covered with troubles, and normal operation became impossible. An attempt to make a disk clone by skipping bad sectors was unsuccessful - the cloning program froze. We ran the disk through the Victoria test with the Remap function. We have pre-selected the necessary settings. By the evening of the same day they successfully removed disk image, and then restored everything from it to a new hard drive. The device came to life, the contract was completed on time.

Additional features of Victoria

Victoria analyzes the condition of the drive in detail and can eliminate almost any failure in its operation. Actually, this is what distinguishes Victoria from the mass of other utilities. While most programs simply show SMART attributes, they can forcefully run entire sets of self-diagnosis tests.

Victoria has four methods and three types of surface testing (twelve modes in total). In each, it automatically counts the total number of defective blocks and writes their addresses to the log. Like a disk editor, Victoria can show the contents of sectors and allows you to change them. In PIO mode, Victoria displays information about logical partitions on the media even if it is not detected at all in the BIOS. No utility with API access is capable of this. Additionally, Victoria can control the level of acoustic noise of the disk (AAM), adjusting the speed of movement of its heads during search, launch low-level formatting, change the HDD volume and run benchmarks. It can even be used to check the physical interface (the status of cables and ports). At home, it will save an HDD or SSD in many difficult situations, except for severe mechanical damage that requires opening the HDA. The laboratory will cope with them too, using Victoria as one of the proven utilities.

Conclusion

There is much more that could be written about Victoria, but for details I will still have to refer you to the Russian-language documentation. And, since the program versions differ in all sorts of subtleties, I recommend reading the manuals for versions 3.5.2, 4.46b and 4.47.

Bad sectors on the hard drive

What are bad sectors on a disk? First, let's briefly look at the organization of information storage on a hard drive.

A hard drive is actually made up of several magnetic disks. Magnetic reading heads move above the rotating disks. When recording, the heads magnetize certain areas of the disk, thereby recording zeros and ones - that is, information. Information is not written anywhere, but in strictly defined areas of the disk. The disk is divided into tracks, and they, in turn, into sectors. Information is recorded in these sectors.

In some cases, information from a sector on a disk cannot be read. This sector is called broken. The reason for the formation of bad sectors may be a sudden power outage during a hard disk write operation, a shock during operation, overheating, or physical wear and tear. Most often, bad sectors on a hard drive are formed as a result of the first two reasons.

Program for checking disk and recovering bad sectors Victoria

Victoria is a free program by Belarusian programmer Sergei Kazansky for restoring bad sectors and checking the hard drive. This program also has a Windows version. But I strongly recommend using the DOS version for more reliable operation of the hard drive. Below you will find instructions for working with the DOS version of Victoria.

The Victoria program allows you to view the SMART table of your hard drive, scan the disk surface for bad and hard-to-read sectors, restore bad sectors, and perform all sectors on the hard drive (low-level formatting). So, let's get down to business!

Checking the disk for bad sectors

Before you start checking and repairing bad sectors of your hard drive, you need to make preparations. It is necessary to properly configure the hard drive controller in the BIOS so that the program can work correctly with hard drive.

It is necessary to set the SATA controller mode in the BIOS to IDE. IN AHCI mode Victoria will not be able to recognize the hard drive and will not be able to work with it.

Now you can boot into DOS using bootable flash drive and launch Victoria.

First of all, you need to select the IDE channel with which we will work, that is, to which the hard drive being tested is connected.

To do this, press the "P" (Latin) key. In the menu that appears, select a channel and press Enter. If your drive is connected to a SATA port, then most likely you need to select Ext. PCI ATA/SATA. If your drive has an IDE connector, then select the port to which it is connected.

If there is a SATA controller correctly configured in the BIOS on the motherboard (in IDE mode), the program will display a list of channels. It is necessary to enter from the keyboard the number of the channel to which the drive being tested is connected. In our case it is "3".

Enter the number "3" and press Enter. After the channel has been selected, you need to initialize the hard drive in the program. To do this, press the key F2. Service information of the hard drive (its model, capacity and other information) will appear on the screen. If this happens, then you did everything correctly and the program was able to connect to the disk.

Now the first thing you should do is look at the SMART table of the hard drive. In many cases, the information from it can clarify the situation even without scanning the surface. To view a SMART disk in Victoria 3.52 you need to press the key F9 .

In the table, we are primarily interested in two points: Reallocated sector count And Current pending sectors . The first parameter shows the number of sectors transferred to the reserve zone (restored or remap), the second parameter shows the number of suspicious sectors, that is, which the hard drive could not read for one reason or another.

As you can see in the figure above, the number of recovered sectors on this disk is very large (767). This indicates that the disk most likely has some problems with the surface of the disk. In addition, SMART also shows the presence of suspicious sectors, which confirms the version of damage to the disk surface. Such a disk may be able to be recovered, but it should not be used in the future. Such a large number of bad sectors indicates that the disk is no longer reliable. It is better to replace such a disk with a new one and clone information from the defective disk to it. But first, in any case, you need to try to restore damaged sectors on your hard drive.

To return from SMART, press any key.

Recovering bad sectors of a hard drive

Now let's look at the question of how to recover bad sectors on a disk. Fixing bad sectors is actually not difficult. To begin with, you can simply scan the disk for bad sectors, but we will immediately enable the recovery function.

Now we should say a little about the mechanism for restoring bad sectors or bad blocks. There are two types of unreadable sectors.

In the first case, the sector cannot be read due to a mismatch between the information written in it and the checksum at the end of the sector. This problem can happen if the power is suddenly turned off during the recording process. That is, when the information in the sector has managed to be recorded, but the checksum remains old. Such bad sectors are not inherently defective. They just contain conflicting information that the hard drive cannot recognize. Such bad sectors are treated by erasing the information in them and writing new correct checksums. After this, the sector becomes readable and writable.

In the second case, there is physical damage to the sector (demagnetization, scratch, etc.). Such a defect may occur, for example, due to a shock or overheating of the hard drive during operation. In this case, the process of fixing bad sectors is more complicated. Each disk has a spare unused area. That is, any disk actually has a slightly larger capacity than is actually used. This area is used to redirect unreadable sectors to it. A new physical address in the spare area for the defective sector is entered into the disk table. The logical address remains the same. That is, the sector seems to remain the same, but in reality it is located in a different place (remap). This approach, of course, reduces the read and write speed in the area of ​​the disk with the transferred sector, since the magnetic heads have to move to the end of the disk (to the spare area) when accessing the redirected sector. But this approach is justified when the number of forwarded sectors is small and the data processing speed is reduced slightly.

Restoring bad sectors using the Victoria 3.52 program

Now let's put the theory into practice. To open the disk check menu, press the key F4. In the dialog box that appears, move the cursor to the item for selecting actions with unreadable sectors and with the cursor on the keyboard, scroll to the right or left, select the item BB: Erase 256 sect, as shown in the picture. Now press Enter and the process of scanning the disk surface for bad blocks will start. The process is quite long. If you want to interrupt the scanning process, press Esc on your keyboard.

If a bad sector is detected, the program will try to erase it. If the sector is physically healthy, then this attempt will be successful. There will be no information left in the sector, but it will be possible to use it in the future. Don't worry too much about the information. If the sector is unreadable, then it will be practically impossible to extract it from there, so by erasing the sector, no additional information is lost. If the sector is unreadable due to a physical defect in the disk, then an attempt to erase the unreadable sector will fail and an error will be reported, as in the figure below.

Even if the process of erasing sectors ends with an error, I recommend not stopping the scan, since the disk may have bad sectors of both the first and second options. And if a bad sector can be restored by erasing, then it is better to do so than to transfer it to the reserve area (which is quite limited).

If it was not possible to restore bad sectors by erasing, then you should try transferring unreadable sectors to the reserve area (remapping). Press the key F4. This time use the arrows to select BB: Classic REMAP as shown in the picture. After that press Enter. The scanning process will begin again. But this time, when a bad sector is detected, the Victoria program will try to perform redirection and move the bad block to the backup area. On some drives, the spare area is very small, so if it runs out of space, the attempt will fail. In our case, everything went well (picture below).

Bad sectors on the hard drive have been successfully restored. Now you need to check the file system for errors (for example, through the ERD Commander utility chkdsk or booting into Windows, if possible) or format the disk. After this, you can continue to use your hard drive without any problems.

The Victoria program is designed for testing various drives: HDD, flash, RAID arrays, and also allows you to hide HDD surface defects, if such a possibility is present. The author of the program is Sergey Kazansky, it is distributed free of charge, you can download it http://hdd-911.com/

Brief description of the program

On Vista and older systems, the program must be run as Administrator, even if your account has administrator rights.

The program window is divided into several tabs: Standard, SMART, Test, Advanced and Setup. The API and PIO switches change the mode of operation of the program with the disk under test. PIO mode requires support from the motherboard chipset. Modern systems are younger than approximately 2011 this mode The program does not support the work, so we will not describe it. Here is a brief description of the control elements in the tabs.

Standard. The window on the right shows a list of drives installed in the system. These are not only hard drives, but also USB flash drives, SD, CF and other memory card readers. They can also be tested. Selecting a device for testing is done by clicking on the desired item. Immediately on the left in the Drive ATA passport window, information about the selected device is displayed. Seek, Acoustic management & BAD"er runs the seek test, allows you to control AAM (if supported by the disk) and simulate on disk.

S.M.A.R.T. When you press the Get SMART button, the SMART is read. USB drives are not supported. The remaining buttons SMART ON, SMART OFF, Auto save attributes ON/OFF allow you to enable/disable SMART monitoring and save the read attributes.

Test. The main tab that we will work with in the future. The Start LBA/End LBA windows specify the beginning and end of the tested area. By default, the entire disk is tested. Pause – pauses the test, the value changes to Continue. Start – starts the selected test, changes the value to Stop – stops the test. Diamond with green arrows - moving forward or backward along the surface of the disk. Block size – the size of the block of sectors read at a time; you can leave it alone. Timeout – time after which, if there is no response from the drive, the program will move to the next sector. End of test – what to do at the end of the test: stop the disk, start the test over again, turn off the disk or turn off the computer. The color scale shows the number of blocks with the specified reading time. Switches Verify, Read, Write – test selection. Verify - check: the disk reads the sector, but does not transfer its contents to the computer. Read – reads a sector into the computer. Write – erases a sector - this test destroys user data. Switches Ignor, Remap, Restore, Erase – mode of working with bad blocks. Ignore - skip. Remap – attempt to perform the procedure of reassigning a sector from the reserve. Restore – attempts to read data and write it back (does not work on modern disks >80GB). Erase – an attempt to write to a damaged sector. It can correct it if an incorrect check sum (CRC) is written to the sector. > - test execution forward. ?|

Advanced. The main window shows the contents of the sector specified in the Sec field. The window below shows the contents of the partition table using the View part data button. The MBR ON/OFF buttons enable/disable the ability to recognize partitions in the operating system.

Example of working with the Victoria program For an example of testing a disk, let's take a faulty HDD WD2600BEVT, which has surface damage and bad attributes in SMART. We launch the program, select our disk and see the following: on the left we see the parameters of the selected disk.
Next, on the SMART tab, you can see the SMART of our disk. Here he is.

Attribute 5 Reallocated sector count – number of reassigned sectors 1287 - the disk “crumbles”.

Attribute 197 Current pending sectors – the number of candidate sectors for reassignment; if the 5th attribute is full, it indicates that the disk is “crumbling”, the surface is quickly degrading.

This means that if you need data from a disk, you need to copy it immediately, and not try to repair such a disk. The actions that we will consider next can lead to the loss of information.

You can uncheck the Grid checkbox, then a disk reading graph will be displayed. In places where there are bad spots, speed dips are visible, marked in red.

Victoria program(Victoria) is designed to check the computer’s hard drive for any problems using a large list of parameters. It includes functionality that allows you to search various errors and contains software tools to test hard drive performance.

This test is not informative; for a more detailed analysis, you need to run a detection and recovery test bad sectors. Go to the “Test” item and click the “Start” button.

Performs hard drive testing. Upon completion of work, displays a detailed report.

Sector status information

If errors were found, highlight them on the grid and click “Restore”. If restoration does not help, then click on the “Clear” button.

Victoria HDD will detect all malfunctions in hard drives and, by eliminating them, will increase the performance of your PC.

Utility victoria hdd was created to solve problems and test various types of hard drives with the ability to use different parameters. The software has advanced functionality that allows you to solve various hard drive problems that arise under current circumstances.

Utility features

This utility can be downloaded from

Download the archive, unpack it and run the executive file vcr446f.exe

The utility interface opens.

This free software has a logical and simple interface with various additional software modules for examining hard drives. Even an ordinary inexperienced user can understand the program, because all the points are written out in clear language, and you can even understand the basic and most important functions even at the first launch.
The Victoria hdd utility will help the user perform a thorough check of the hard drive; as a result, information about the status of the hard drive will be provided. In addition, you can perform self-diagnosis in the “S.M.A.R.T.” mode. which allows you to determine the service life of the disk.

Victoria hdd software has a function to check the surface of the hdd disk for possible damage and other problems. The utility can perform full check hard drive for defective sectors, after analysis, information about the state of the media as a whole is provided. If Victoria hdd finds bad sectors, they will be reassigned so that you can use the drive in the future without losing data.
The Victoria utility for disks can be used by both professional repairmen and ordinary users. Depending on dexterity and skills, the user can configure the Victoria hdd software to suit his needs, which will change the hard drive analysis algorithm.

What is included in the functionality of the Victoria utility:
The utility is capable of giving a detailed report on the operation of the hard drive and its technical specifications;
Allows you to identify connected media via a sata/ide channel;
Has the ability to detect flaws on the surface of the hard drive;
Capable of eliminating hard drive shortcomings caused during operation, such as encryption of a bad sector and others;
Equipped with a practical and comfortable smart monitor that clearly displays important vital signs of the disk;
Has an integrated explorer for working with the file system;
Detailed help system for using and configuring the Victoria hdd utility;
The Victoria utility is absolutely free;

The Victoria hdd utility was created to conduct various tests of hard drives; it is more suitable for people with an above-average level of computer use. If you are running the Victoria hdd utility for the first time, it is better not to change the preset settings if you have no idea about their purpose.
In general, the Victoria utility is very useful and relevant for tracking hard drive problems and successfully eliminating most failures. This software has already been able to restore more than one practically “dead” hard drive, and if you are faced with a problem related to a hard drive, the Victoria hdd utility will be very useful.

Checking the hard drive

We open the program, and on the “Standard” tab we see the disk passport, which is listed on the right.

Go to the “Tests” tab. Select the “Ignore” check mode. In this mode, the program will make requests to sectors of the hard drive and if they are faulty or faulty, it will skip them.

Click the “Start” button. Scanning has started.

I stopped the utility (it takes a long time to check), but the results (not the entire disk) can already be assessed.

Explanation:

We put the utility into recovery mode and click “Start”

Victoria hdd video:

Bad sectors on a hard drive What are bad sectors on a disk? First, let's briefly look at the organization of information storage on a hard drive. A hard drive actually consists of...

Bad sectors on a hard drive What are bad sectors on a disk? First, let's briefly look at the organization of information storage on a hard drive. A hard drive actually consists of...