Corrupt sectors troubleshooting tools Files

Overview
========

This package provides some basic troubleshooting tools that can help when you encounter defect sectors on a harddisk (or so-called "pending sectors"). This tool helps you if for example:

* You have defect sectors on your harddisk, and you want to know which files are affected. 
* You have "pending sectors" on your harddisk that cannot be read from; by writing to such a pending sector you can restore the readability of that sector. This is sometimes important if you want to run whole disk backups that break immediately when a non-readable sector is encountered. 

These are the tools provided (you have to run them from the commandline (cmd.exe), and you should have adminstrative privileges):

* scan_hd: This tool scans the whole harddisk for defects and prints the unreadable sectors. If you specify the --overwrite option on the command line you are asked whether the unreadable sectors should be overwritten. This can help if these sectors are "pending sectors". S.M.A.R.T. tools like smartmontools (smartmontools.sourceforge.net) can show you whether you have pending sectors. Note that overwriting does NOT work on Windows Vista and above if the defect sectors belong to the file system. In such a case running a file system check is recommended. 

* scan_files: This tool scanns all files on the disk for read errors. Thus you can learn which files are defect. 

* find_files_with_sectors: This tool searches files of which parts are stored in the sectors specified on the command line. This search is much faster than scan_files, but requires you to know the defect sectors (these you can obtain by the scan_hd tool or S.M.A.R.T. tools). 

* overwrite_file: This tool simply overwrites a given file. This helps with removing "pending sectors". 

General note: These programs should be run with administrative priviledges. 

Note on drive numbers: You can get the drive numbers by executing "mmc diskmgmt.msc". They usually start with zero. 

WARNING: These programs are provided as-is and their use can possibly cause loss of data!