
**************************************************
* DRevitalize v1.0 (Demo)                        *
* (only for older hard drives)                   *
* Copyright (c) 2004 by Piotr Ulaszewski         *
* All rights reserved                            *
**************************************************

Demo License Agreement :
------------------------
BEFORE YOU USE THIS SOFTWARE, CAREFULLY READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS 
OF THIS AGREEMENT. BY USING THIS SOFTWARE, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE 
BOUND BY AND ARE BECOMING A PARTY TO THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT 
AGREE TO ALL OF THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE.

All copyrights to the DRevitalize utility (hereafter referred to 
as the Software) are exclusively owned by Piotr Ulaszewski.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER 
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED 
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
PIOTR ULASZEWSKI IS NOT OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE ANY UPDATES, UPGRADES OR 
TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR THE SOFTWARE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE 
RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES,
DATA LOSS, LOST PROFITS, LOST SAVINGS OR LOST REVENUES ARISING OUT OF OR
RESULTING FROM THE USE, MISUSE OR MODIFICATION OF THE SOFTWARE.



***************************************************************************
                         SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
***************************************************************************

usage under clean dos :
Any 80386 or higher processor installed on a motherboard with BIOS date
not earlier than January 1999. The motherboard BIOS must support INT 13h
extensions!

usage under Windows 9x :
Any 80386 or higher processor.



***************************************************************************
                            INTRODUCTION
***************************************************************************

DRevitalize is a program that repairs bad sectors (physical defects)
on popular magnetic media (hard drives and also floppy drives to some
extent) by generating a special sequence of high and low signals around
the physically damaged area. The surface of almost any drive can be repaired
with this utility (even hard drives that were droped down or exposed to strong
electromagnetic fields). However, this DRevitalize (Demo) and the DRevitalize
(Light) version are not designed to work with modern drives having an
intelligent defect management system enabled (usually any hard drive produced
after 2000). Floppy disk support is purely experimental and will probably be
improved in the future (2 out of 10 floppy disks can be repaired).
DRevitalize (Demo) version can only scan and repair the first 1000000 sectors.
Please read the demo.txt file for more information.


***************************************************************************
       A FEW NOTES ABOUT REVITALIZING HARD DRIVES WITH THIS UTILITY
***************************************************************************

ALMOST 75% OF HARD DISK DRIVES WITH DAMAGED SURFACE CAN BE REPAIRED IF :
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. The drive was not opened (it's surface was not contaminated).
2. The drive is always detected by the BIOS.
   IMPORTANT NOTE : The use of this utility on a drive seldom detected
                    by the BIOS may kill the drive completely!!!
                    (usually such drives have their surface very seriously
                    damaged and trying to revitalize it during more
                    than 30-60 minutes may result in permanent
                    not recoverable hard disk failure unless someone
                    knows how to rewrite the disk firmware).
3. The drive surface does not contain scratches or other serious physical
   damage.


Foreword :
----------
This utility accesses the disk via BIOS INT 13h extensions, therefore
it doesn't matter whether you have a FAT16, FAT32, NTFS or any other
file system installed on your drive. It will recognoze any drive that
the motherboard BIOS recognizes. Therefore it is recommended that the
system BIOS be at least from 1999. DRevitalize should be run under
clean DOS, although it is possible to run it in a console window under
Win 9x/Me. In the latter case Windows drivers replacing real mode BIOS
calls will be used. I do not recommend running this utility under
Windows (as data loss may occur if other applications are working when
disk access is taking place). However, in some cases this program may
prove to be more effective under Windows when it comes to defect repair.

Before proceding you should back up all your data. Damaged sectors that
the utility can not read (it will try to read a damaged sector at least
2 times) WILL LOSE THEIR DATA. This is a necessary step in order to
revitalize a particulair sector. But as far as I'm concerned this should
not be a problem because sectors that are marked bad by the operating
system do not contain data anyway. It would be best though to run
a standard recovery utility first, and then when all data is secured run
the DRevitalize utility to reclaim all bad sectors. Please note that you
will have to reformat your hard drive in order to erase bad sector flags
triggered by the operating system.

Modern hard disks only show bad sectors on write access when their spare
sector pool has been exhausted. This means that if automatic sector
reallocation was turned on when the drive surface started getting bad,
those bad sectors were replaced by good sectors from the spare pool
causing sector reallocation (and thus a slower access to those sectors).
This utility is not designed to work with modern hard drives having an
intelligent defect management system. If the program detects such drive,
in most cases it will simply force the reallocation of any bad sectors
discovered until the spare pool is exhausted and auto-reallocation is
the drive itself. This is a limitation of the DRevitalize (Demo) and
the DRevitalize (Light) versions.



***************************************************************************
        HOW TO REGENERATE HARD DRIVES WITH A LOT OF BAD SECTORS
***************************************************************************

1. Make sure you have your operating system installed on 100% trust worthy
   hard drive (with good S.M.A.R.T. status) not showing any bad sectors.

2. Install the faulty drive as slave or on the secondary IDE controller
   as standalone (this is the best option).

3. Start the DRevitalize utility and select the faulty drive (preferably
   under clean DOS) from sector 0 (always counted as LBA).

4. Let the utility revitalize the first Gigabyte (1024MB). Try at least
   5 times when all bad sectors are not recovered. If there are still
   bad sectors on the drive after you run the utility 5 times please
   give the drive a break and start again after a few hours or the next
   day. If after running the utility more than 20 times the drive still
   shows bad sectors in the 1GB area then it's evident that the drive
   can not be revitalized. Note that DRevitalize creates a log file
   with detailed info on recovered and non-recovered bad sectors.

5. Scanning the entire disk area takes a lot of time for 80GB and bigger
   drives. Therefore, if the drive surface wasn't damaged in the first
   gigabyte area you can try to run another utility that can scan faster
   than DRevitalize (I can think of dedicated utilities made by your drive
   manufacturer company). Note on paper sectors that have problems and start
   Drevitalize with the appropriate sector offset. It may happen that
   recovered bad sectors may be detected as bad once again. If this is the
   case you should run the DRevitalize utility at least a few times on those
   sectors during 2 or 3 days.

6. Rerun the DRevitalize utility again on the next day specifying the
   areas recovered the day before. Make sure they do not contain bad
   sectors. Repeat this step for 5 consecutive days (this hard drive
   will store your data so it's better to be 100% sure it's ok).

7. Measure transfer speed on all areas of the disk and isolate potential
   surface problems (sector areas). If transfer speed is particularly
   low around a certain area try to move the data around (copy large files
   from one place to the other on the revitalized hard drive). You can run
   scandisk (with read/write - a complete surface scan too). Usually by
   moving the data around (read/write) the disk surface revitalized with
   this utility will further improve it's condition. Scan the entire disk
   surface with dedicated hard disk diagnostic utilities made by your drive
   manufacturer. Make sure the drive passes the surface scan test!

8. Never consider a disk fully revitalized until it shows no read errors
   for 3 consecutive days! Usually after a week, a completely damaged
   hard drive (10% - 30% of bad sectors) can become a really good hard
   drive with a perfect surface :-). Basing on my current experience
   I can honestly say that a hard drive successfully revitalized with
   the above procedure will not start getting bad sectors once you will
   use it noramly (provided it is not misused again!).



******************************************************************************
To run DRevitalize on Windows 2000/NT/XP systems you will have to create
a bootable diskette.
******************************************************************************

How to create a bootable diskette under Windows :
-------------------------------------------------
1. Format a floppy from a DOS window.
   format a: /s /u

2. Copy DREVDOS.EXE console application to the formated floppy disk.

3. Boot the computer from the floppy disk.
   note : most systems are set up to boot from a:\ drive first,
          but in case your machine does not boot from a:\ drive
          you will have to change the boot sequence in the system
          BIOS. Hit DEL or F2 (depending on your BIOS) on startup
          and make sure the boot process is set to floppy disk
          as the first and hard drive as the second boot device.

4. After loading DOS from the bootable floppy disk start DREVDOS.EXE
   note : it does not need any extra drivers to operate.

