TOC ·
Installation and Run
System Requirements
Windows
Linux
MacOS
DOS
Common Requirements
- Drives: without significant hardware/firmware problems
Attention!
If there are doubts about device physical state
(extraneous sounds, error messages, slow performance, the device is after hitting, etc.)
it is recommended to address to specialists (data recovery from damaged devices)
- CPU: Intel compatible (i486 and higher)
- To save/use results, reports, and settings a valid partition is required
which is supported by the operating system
(in particular, FAT partition is required to work in DOS/Win9x/ME)
If Device Size Is Detected Incorrectly
This must be resolved before any further work.
Some issues are quite simple -
see guide from external source.
Some issues are below:
- Capacity Limitation Jumper is misplaced (device size is limited to 32GB)
- HPA is erroneously applyed.
Device size usually becomes 1TB less or similar (typical to some GIGABYTE motherboards).
Try software:
HDD Capacity Restore Tool (Windows), hdparm (Linux), HDAT2, MHDD, Victoria (DOS)
- No large drive support in OS - see below
- Incorrect drivers for SATA/USB controller (no correct 3TB+ support).
Device is displayed tipically 2.2TB less. Update drivers
- USB enclosure / another adapter has no correct 3TB+ support.
Change adapter or attach device directly
- Zero size: the device is not accessible, you should address to specialists
Windows 2K+ (2K/XP/Vista/7/higher)
- Recommended: Windows XP + SP2 and higher
- 32-bit versions work in both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
- Administrator privileges
- Drives: supported by OS
- For drives larger than 2TB, Windows Vista/7/higher is required
with the most recent versions of controller drivers installed
- For drives larger than 128GB in Windows 2K/XP
certain ServicePacks must be installed (Windows 2K SP4 and Windows XP SP2)
and LBA48 support must be switched on in the system registry of Windows 2K.
Windows 2K/XP does not support drives larger than 2TB
with the exception of special XP-compatible USB-boxes
Windows 98/ME
- Drives: supported by OS
Attention!
Windows 9x/ME handles 128GB and larger drives incorrectly unless special patches are installed.
You may reload computer in MS-DOS mode and use DOS version to access drives via BIOS or ATA-interface
Linux
- OS: Latest Linux distributions with libc library
- 32-bit shared libraries to run 32-bit versions on 64-bit Linux (e.g. libc6-i386 package)
- Drives: supported by OS
- Superuser rights
- Root terminal or emulator (xterm, Konsole, Gnome-Terminal, etc.) for console version,
or gtk2.0 library for GUI version
- utf-8 locale support
MacOS
- OS: macOS 10.10+
- Drives: supported by OS
(macOS 10.14+ may prevent accessing the system/boot disk,
but anyway data recovery should never be performed from the disk being in use by OS -
see warnings)
- Administrator privileges
DOS
- OS: MS-DOS 5.0+ compatible
- Drives: supported by BIOS or supported by DOS (using ASPI drivers) or supporting ATA-interface (IDE or SATA).
SATA disks must be switched to IDE-compatible mode in BIOS for direct ATA-access
- DOS Extender (file CWSDPMI.EXE © 2000 CW Sandmann in the software directory is enough)
- At least 200 KB of low memory free
- At least 64 MB of extended memory
- For extended name duplicates handling during data recovery
long name driver is required (e.g., DOSLFN.COM © Haftman software)
- If you wish to use a mouse then mouse driver for DOS is required