💽 program to work with hard drives Victoria HDD - what it is and how to use it

General information about Victoria HDD program

The development belongs to an individual entrepreneur of Belarus Sergei Kazan. The story of her start more with the DOS operating system for which you originally created. With the popularization of Windows developer has released version, and under it. In addition, there are plenty of very different projects from third-party developers, both free and commercial, which is an offshoot of mainline Victoria HDD.

functionality

Victoria - this is primarily a tool for diagnosing and monitoring the hard drive status, as well as for the recovery of bad sectors, and data storage. The program can scan the disks in a large range of the most diverse settings, with which you can determine the fault hard disk detail. The only problem - the program can operate in two basic modes - port input / output (PIO), and application programming interface (API). The first refers to the disk directly, without the participation of the drivers and the system, but does not work on 64-bit systems, although it has already been decided in the new versions of the program. The second works on all systems, however, limits the maximum possible software. Usually in PIO mode are specialists in data recovery labs. Victoria is able to work both with the old drives, and a brand new, up to SSD.

System requirements

Rigid system requirements, the program does not. This is due primarily to the fact that the program itself weighs only 700 KB and requires no installation in the system. Plus, it is not demanding of computer resources, since it was originally designed as a disk utility under DOS, with excellent optimization, which is economical to use every bit of memory. Therefore, Victoria will run on laptops and 10-year-old and today's powerful gaming stations. The only constraint that may be encountered - the inability to run the program in PIO mode on 64-bit systems. Therefore, you should pay attention to this feature in use.

Advantages and disadvantages

The merits of the program is significantly greater than the disadvantages. The most important it advantage - it is free. This also can be attributed to the small size of the executable file, and the almost complete indifference to system performance. Although the program and there is only on voluntary donations to the developer all the main innovations modern technologies are introduced into it pretty quickly, that is, the program remains relevant to this day. The advantages include a large number and wide variety of tests and adjustments.

From significant shortcomings can be identified unless the limited support PIO mode on 64-bit systems and "incarcerated" only under the line of DOS and Windows.

Interface and function keys

Unprepared user first meeting with Victoria HHD could plunge into a light shock. Moreover, the program is in English, so more and immediately throws to the user a whole slew of settings and adjustments. We decided to walk on the main points and tell what it means to each of them and what function is performed.

main window

Regardless of the selected tab in the main window, displays the total for all the items. There is also the service information, and some controls. In the upper part contains the hard drive model, serial number, firmware type and volume. Flush with hexadecimal editor tabs disposed call button for viewing and dump switch modes between the API and PIO.

In the right pane immediately attracts attention Break All button. Her press immediately activate a complete shutdown of all operations initiated by the program. It is worth remembering that when working in the API mode, the operating system itself may send the hard drive. Stop them Victoria is no longer able to.

Just below there are two buttons Sleep and Recall. The first "lull" drive, the second awakens. They are mostly used for external hard drives. More below has two LEDs with designations «Rd» and «Wrt», which show that currently occurs with disc - read or write. Passp button generates drive passport, that is, data about it. The same can be obtained at the "Standard" tab, selecting the correct drive from the list.

Tab «Setup»

It contains settings to test, test, and display information about the storage of data. The entire section is logically divided into blocks that are responsible for a particular configuration category.

• ATA protocol settings. Settings for the ATA protocol, which are used only in PIO mode. Here you can adjust the timer that determines the hard drive response to commands;
• EXT Passport. Setting the expanded output disc information. One of the interesting plants can be identified Diag S.F. - Symptom Check, Real Size - determination of the actual size and Power Status - the current state of the spindle;
• Sound. Sound settings. You can disable all use the built-in speaker or to specify automatic shutdown sounds at night;
• Common presets, passport options. passports and settings common to all. The very first tick Only Non-destructive functions disables the ability to write data to disk, to avoid damage during the various tests and experiments. Show logical drives - together with the physical disks, and display logic. Ignore FDD - will ignore the floppy drives during scanning, as they are usually slow. I speak russian - includes the ability to get some service messages in Russian;
• Log settings is responsible for the file, which will be stored test data and service information;
• Drive Test Options. Here you can find the settings for the testing operations of hard drives. For example, Enable breaking internal loops allows you to interrupt the program cycle, if the failed drive began to hover.

Change settings should carefully because it is possible to make changes, which then did not get a fix.

Tab «Standart»

Standard window program, which provides basic information on the hard disk. Large block on the left - drive your passport, where you can find information about the model, size, the SMART function, supported by guidelines and protocols. Located just below the information unit that specifies a media type, its speed of rotation, if it is an ordinary HDD, and a check mark storing data in a folder logs.

The right passports from the block there is a list of all detected devices in the system. Clicking on the right, you can get his passport in the left box. At the bottom of the log of events in the program is located.

Tab «SMART»

Abbreviation S.M.A.R.T. It stands for: self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology. That is technology for self-monitoring and self-test, which is included in the ATA protocol and is used in hard drives. The SMART system automatically scans the disk and gives the result as a list of attributes, which are assigned on the basis of the test values. And, depending upon these values, we can determine the status of the drive. The following attributes are presented in Victoria HDD:

• Raw read error rate. The frequency of errors when reading data from the storage device;
• Throughput performance. It shows the overall drive performance. If the figures are beginning to fall, drive end soon enough;
• Spin-up time. Time promotion drives. Invariably increases with increasing wear or poor nutrition;
• Number of spin-up times. Number storage inclusions;
• Reallocated sector count. A very important parameter. It shows the number of reassigned sectors. remapping sectors in the spare area occurs in the event of a disk error. The higher the value, the closer to the hard disk failure;
• Power-on time. Total running time of the disc in hours;
• HDA temperature. The current disk temperature. The Victoria also indicated its minimum and maximum values;
• Reallocated Event Count. Adjacent to Reallocated sector count parameter. It shows the number of remapping operations. The more of them, so much the worse;
• Current pending sector count. Another parameter related to the sector remapping. It shows the number of candidates from a number of sectors for reassignment;
• Offline scan UNC sectors. Almost identical to the previous paragraph, with the difference that is tested in idle mode. The higher the value, the worse;
• Ultra DMA CRC Errors. Shows the number of errors when transferring data from the motherboard to the disk controller. It does not reflect the life of the disc, but the large number of errors may indicate poor quality connection to the loop level and connector.

Often the program, after the SMART-diagnostics may issue a terrible values ​​in some positions. That's why a lot of attributes and analyze the status of the disc is necessary in a combination of several. In addition, should refer to the specifications of the manufacturer SMART-since they can determine the values ​​of their units of measure or its algorithms.

Tab «Tests»

The most interesting tab in the program. It is possible to start the drive test. In the left pane will display a graphical representation of sectors. In the right - setting unit. At the top you can define the start and end sector. Button «Scan» will start the test. Just below the unit has a color gradation types of sectors on the basis of the response time. The most interesting block series comprising type with bad sector. Can take 4 values: ignore - do nothing, remap - remap the sector of the reserve, restore - restore the data and write it again, erase - write attempt in the bad sector.

The effectiveness of the Victoria HDD program

Overall, Victoria HDD rather complex program for the average user. Even more, it can be dangerous in unskilled hands. With very powerful functionality, even one wrong move can cause the loss of all data on the hard drive. But those who know a bit about how to construct storage, will be able to squeeze out of the program and all of its potential to restore a lot of the hard drive, saving gigabytes of data. It is a pity that such a functional product is financed only by voluntary donations.