How to use Disk Doctors Drive Manager

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How to Disk Doctors Drive Manager

Disk Doctors Drive Image

Clone a drive

Cloning is a process to copy the entire content of one drive to another. Cloning is performed by creating exact sector-by-sector copy of source drive to destination drive. You may use disk cloning to upgrade to a new hard disk, or to create a comprehensive backup of your operating system and installed software including your data. To clone a drive to another, destination drive must be equal or bigger in size as compared to source hard drive.

Follow the below guidelines to clone your faulty drive to a healthy drive using Disk Doctors Drive Image software.

From the application main Window Click on Clone Drive option .

As soon as you click Clone Drive option, you can see a Window, where you can select source and destination drive (see Figure b). From the drive(s) list, select source drive(s).

Automatically the available destination drive list will be listed (see Figure c). Select destination drive(s) and click on "Start" .

Soon after, the application displays message box, which contains the information about the source and destination drives. Make sure that you have selected appropriate source and destination drives. Now click on "yes" button to proceed further .

Cloning process would be initiated and the progress will be displayed graphically . Immediately, after clicking on "Yes," Window displays cloning of drive .

Once cloning gets completed, all the activities performed will be recorded in the log file, which can be referred to know the details of process completion.

Please Note: Before cloning, make sure that the size of destination drive must be equal or bigger than source drive. The destination drive must not be smaller than source hard disk.

Please Note: Cloning is an irreversible process, please ensure that you have carefully selected the 'Source' and 'destination' drive before initiating the process.

Image Drive

Drive imaging is a process where the content of entire drive is imaged into a single file.

Disk Doctors Drive Image is helpful in creating a single massive disk image file, which contains the contents of entire drive. It's just like taking a screen shot of your entire drive. It is helpful in creating backup or for duplication purpose. A drive image contains an exact copy of a drive. To create drive image, you should have equal or more space in your drive.

Use Disk Doctors Drive Image option if you do not have a spare drive but have enough space to create an image.

Image file created can be restored to a different drive. The result is same as drive cloning.

Follow the steps below to create image of your drive.

Run Disk Doctors Drive Image software, from the application main screen click on Image Drive option .

As soon as you click Image Drive option, you can see a Window, where you can see a Source Drives list and destination path (see Figure b). Select the desired drive whose image has to be taken from the Source Drives list .

After selecting the source drive, browse or enter the destination path to save disk image file and click on "Start" button .

Immediately, application displays message box, which contains information about the source and destination drive(s). Now click on "yes" to proceed further .

Disk Imaging process is initiated and process progress is displayed graphically as shown in. After imaging process is complete, all the activities performed during imaging will be recorded in the log file, which can be referred to know the details of process completion.

Please Note: Make sure that you have enough space in your drive to store image file.

Restore Image

Restore image is a process where you can restore the disk image file to a desired drive. Disk Doctors Drive Image is comprehensive software where it takes a snapshot from the image file and restores it to a desired drive. To restore an image to the desired drive, the drive must be similar or bigger in size.

In case of unexpected data loss, system malfunction or hard drive disaster it is useful to restore the hard drive previous state.

The step below guides you to know how to restore image into your drive.

Launch Disk Doctors Drive Image software and click on Restore Image option as shown in.

A Window will be displayed with Source path and Destination Drives list. Click on "Browse" and select a source disk image file, and select to which Destination Drive you wish to restore the image file and click on "Start" to initiate image restoration process.

Soon after, the program displays message box which contains attributes about the source and destination drive(s). Make sure you have selected appropriate disk image file and destination drive and click on "yes" to proceed further .

After clicking on "Yes" button, restoration process is displayed graphically as shown in .

Immediately, after completing the restore process, all the activities performed during restoring will be recorded in the log file, which can referred for details after process completion.

Please Note: Image Restoration would overwrite all the contents on your destination drive with the contents in disk image file. Please ensure that destination drive has no critical information or the same is backed up.

Surface Scan

Surface Scan is a process used to scan hard drive to detect bad sectors.

Surface scanning allows you to scan an entire drive for what is commonly referred to as 'bad sectors,' where bad sectors could be the cause for data loss. Your critical data might get corrupt or unreadable due to these bad sectors, since they become unreadable or whole drive may become impassable in some cases because the structures that define the drive could be residing on bad sectors.

To perform surface scan follow the steps mentioned below:

From the application main Window click on Surface Scan .

Select the drive(s) that you wish to scan and click on "Start" button to continue .

Immediately, after clicking the "Next" button scanning starts and bad sectors located are displayed graphically (red blocks).

As soon as the application completes the scanning process, the scanned information will be displayed in a log file, which can be referred to know the bad sectors developed on your hard drive.

Disk Doctors Drive SOS

Programme Main Windows

Install Disk Doctors Drive Manager software successfully, execute the application from Disk Doctors Drive Manager application icon on the desktop or from Programs list in Start menu START --> PROGRAMS --> Disk Doctors Drive Manager --> Disk Doctors Drive SOS.EXE.

The program main Window displays the information such as:

1. The number of attached hard drive(s).

2. Disk Info - consists of information such as model number, size, serial number and overall health status of connected hard drive(s).

3. Health Status & Temperature Display - shows the health status and current temperature of the selected hard drive.

4. Temperature Info - consists of current temperature of the attached hard drive and maximum temperature values of hard drive.

In maximum temperature text box - you can set a maximum value for your drive, so that the application monitors temperature and provides various alerts at different temperature conditions.

5. Additionally, it reads several S.M.A.R.T attribute values of the hard drive, and will be displayed in the bottom panel of the program main Window with respective description.

Tidings in the Window

6. The closing icon in the main Window

By using this icon, you can close the application main Window. Remember, that closing main Window does not stop its function; it continuously works in the background. Whenever, you need to access the program you can use system tray icon.

7. Application menu

To work with various options of Disk Doctors Drive SOS, the application menu is used.

Menue Bar

"Disk Doctors Drive SOS" presents menu bar where several functions for the software are accessed from the menu bar.

Menu bar consists of the most commonly used functions .

1. File menu: Consists of three options which include:



Refresh - Used to refresh the drives. When you click on this, it immediately refreshes all the drives, current temperature and S.M.A.R.T values.

Hide - Used to hide the application.

Exit - Helps to close "Disk Doctors Drive SOS" application.

2. Tool menu: Consists of four options such as:



Settings - Opens Window, where you can configure the working mode of "Disk Doctor's Dive SOS." Here you can find more features to work on Drive SOS.

Logical Drive Info - Provides information about the attached hard drive which contains information's about the partition, file system type, total size of the hard drive, available free space and memory information.

System Info - Displays CPU temperature and provides memory (RAM) and processor information's, which include physical memory installed, physical memory available and total virtual memory, processor, number of processors and processor manufacturer.

Save S.M.A.R.T Info - Here you can save all S.M.A.R.T attributes of your attached hard drive, so that you can record drive performance over a specific period of time.

3. Help menu:



In the help menu you can find options such as:

• User Manual
  
  

• check for updates
  
  

• Online support
  
  

• About drive SOS
  
  

User Manual

In the help menu you can find "Help contents" option. If you click on this option, it opens this file of "Drive SOS" to view all the contents about the application and it's purpose.

Online Support

When you click on "Support," takes you to "Disk Doctors Drive SOS" technical support link. This can be used when you have any queries or problems while you are working with "Drive SOS."

About Drive SOS

If you click on "About drive SOS" option, opens a dialog box containing information about "Drive SOS" – which includes its version and copyright information.

system tray Icon and Hints

The main function of "Disk Doctors Drive SOS" is to monitor the health status of your hard drive continuously in the background. The program icon will be displayed in the system tray where it displays the health status of your hard drive.

1. The system tray contains the program icon with the temperature.

The program icon will be displayed in the system tray as shown in the above Figure a. It displays the current temperature of the attached hard drive along with the time.

Monitoring hard drive temperature is one of the salient features of this program. The increase in temperature makes the system to work slowly or even lead to hard drive failure if temperatures reach the extreme conditions. Therefore, it is very important to monitor temperature of the hard drive. According to your convenience, temperature can be adjusted in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

The program main Window opens, if you click on the icon.

The physical drive(s) temperature along with the icon

The Figure a, shows current temperature of the physical drive(s), where it gradually changes from green to orange or red as the temperature changes from normal to medium or severe respectively.

A regular program icon

Here, you can see only the program icon in the system tray. Other than that, you won't be able to view any information about the hard drive.

Hints

You can catalogue the information about your hard drive(s) according to your preference at certain time intervals, so that you will be able to view a pop up message about the status of the attached drive(s). When the hard drive health status is normal, there won't be any message but when it's in medium and severe condition there will be a pop up message.

Example, showing when the temperature status of your drive is in urgent.



Example, showing when the temperature status of your drive is in critical condition.

Significance of Alerts The basic function of Disk Doctors Drive SOS is to alert in varying degrees within few minutes before hard drive gets crash. As a result of regularly monitoring the S.M.A.R.T attributes, temperature and health of your hard drive, this would give you considerable amount of time so as to take necessary preventive, corrective or backup actions.

When hard drive temperature exceeds threshold limits or when any S.M.A.R.T attributes varies beyond acceptable limits, it would eventually cause hard drive failure. Disk Doctors Drive SOS pops up an alert, just before the actual crash could occur. Alerts and Actions can be set according to your convenience. The application offers you different types of alerts like, pop up intimation, sound alert, e-mail notification, any of which could be chosen to warn you when there is an impending hard drive failure.

Couple of adjectives are used by Disk Doctors Drive SOS to define critical drive state and anticipate hard drive failure.

"Critical" condition for temperature when actual temperature exceeds threshold value.

Example, showing HDD critical temperature state.

Click on 'backup Drive' button to take backup before any unexpected data loss or HDD failure occurs. This would launch 'Disk Doctors Drive Image' utility which can be used to save your data from a dying hard drive. You can either clone or create a disk image file using this utility. See user manual of Disk Doctors Drive Image to learn more about how to 'Clone' or 'Create Disk Image.

"Bad" health condition when any or few or all of S.M.A.R.T attributes vary beyond acceptable limits.

Example, showing 'Bad' HDD health status

Necessary preventive actions are taken if actions is set to "Turn off" system in 'Actions' settings. However, your data is still not safe since the problems might occur during next reboot. It is always recommended to take complete system back up in case of severe temperature or bad health conditions.

Disk Doctors Folders Manager

Analyze and Examine Local Drives

Analyzing your physical drive helps you to view how much drive space has been occupied by each file, folder, application or program. The output result will be obtained in the form of bar chart. After completing the analyses you can eliminate data which is no longer required from your physical drive.

Please follow the steps below to examine your logical drive:

1. Run Disk Doctors Folder Manager utility. It displays drive name along with total space, available free space and percent of used space on the selected drive

2. Select drive as shown in (Figure b), that you would like to analyze from the drive(s) list on the left hand side Windows top panel, where it will display files and folders.

3. Now click on particular folder as shown in below (Figure c) and the application will start analyzing.

4. A bar chart displays the distribution and space usage respectively .

NOTE: You can analyze your hard drive space by clicking on My Computer.

Analyze Folders

The Tree view will be displayed on the Windows top left panel, where you can generate a demand tree Now, click on any desired folder from the list, application starts analysis of selected item and displays the contents, size and other informative attributes related to the selected folder. A Bar chart display provides valuable, visual information about the size of file(s)/folder(s), which appears within the lower right-hand side of the screen as shown in (Figure c). File and folder entries in the detail view are color coded according to their file properties.

Comprehend Bar Chart

The bar chart displays the file or folder entries in detail view. The chart will be color coded according to their properties. You can determine name and the percentage of individual file/folder. To change the settings you can go to view and click on graph settings.



There several options available in the chart such as:

• Save chart
  
• Print chart
  
• View chart
  
  

Recycle Bin Features

Disk Doctors Folder Manager consists "Recycle Bin" which is used to restore or delete file(s)/folder(s). To work on that you can go to Tool --> Recycle Bin or you can simply press Ctrl+R. The functionality of "Recycle Bin" is similar to Windows Recycle Bin. You can empty your recylce bin on a regular basis to minimize the impact to available hard drive space.



Functions of Recycle Bin:

• Displays the properties of a file or folder
  
• Restore a particular file or folder
  
• Restores all the files and folders
  
• Empty Recycle Bin
  
• Empties all the files and folders
  

Note: There is an option to delete individual file and folder.