Introduction to ByteBack Data Recovery Investigative Suite^TM

ByteBack Data Recovery Investigative Suite^TM (D.R.I.S.) is a menu driven DOS program designed to help you solve a wide range of hard disk related problems.

Mass data loss, a situation where access to an entire disk or partition is lost, is often caused by damage to meta structures such as the MBR, Partition Tables, LDM, or the Boot Sector of an individual partition. By repairing those structures with ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM, data can be made accessible again.

Another common cause for data loss is unreadable sectors; while a few read errors may only have minor consequences and only  prevent access to one or more files, large blocks of unreadable sectors can prevent access to individual volumes or even entire disks. In that case you can use ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM to clone a hard disk (even when conventional cloning tools fail due to bad sectors or file system errors), scan the disk surface for read- and write errors and possibly fix bad sectors.

ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM allows you to edit (patch) your disk using the built-in disk editor, partition table editor and boot sector editor. It also offers basic partition management (hide, unhide, set active) features.

You can 'prepare' for data loss caused by damage to the MBR, partition table sectors, boot sectors, or LDM (on Windows 2000/XP Dynamic disks) by using ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM and it's unique proprietary backup system to create on-disk backups of those structures. Once a backup exists, damage to any of the previously mentioned disk structures can be easily fixed by restoring the backup.

# ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM advantages:

• ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM is easy to use: the (automatic) recovery and repair procedure is simple and straightforward:
  - the hard disk is scanned and analyzed;
  - based on the analysis, ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM will present a list of partitions;
  - from this list you simply select all partitions you want to be present after the repair;
  - ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM will then rebuild the partition tables and perform the necessary boot sectors repairs, if possible.
  
  
• ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM is safe to use: you can undo the changes that were made to the disk during the repair procedure. If the repair was unsuccessful or had undesired results, changes made by the program can be 'rolled back'.
  
  
• ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM is quick: if the damaged disk structures can be repaired, the ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM repair procedure is much faster then recovering the files using a file-recovery tool.
  
  
• ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM is reliable: ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM has already helped thousands of users recover Terabytes of data.

• MBR Repair (boot code & partition tables)
• Partition Table Repair; unlike other tools, ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM can restore access to logical partitions
• Advanced Boot Sector Repair (FAT, FAT32, NTFS)
• MBR, Partition Table & LDM Backup
• Disk Editor (RAW hex, ASCII, Partition Table, Boot Sector)
• Basic Partition Table Management; Set Active Partition, Partition hiding/unhiding
• Undo feature for all automatic repairs
• Surface Scan; read-only and non destructive read/write
• Disk Cloning, even when logical damage or bad sectors exist
• Forensic mode
• Disk Compare
• Low Level Format (pattern write or wipe)
• State File; once a disk has been scanned (using the demo-version) the scan can be skipped the next time
• Extensive logging

# ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM system requirements:

• ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM only operates on hard disks that can be accessed using the extended int13h interface -
  these would include IDE, (x)ATA(x) and SCSI disks. ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM can also operate on hardware RAID arrays.
• Operating System: any MS-DOS compatible DOS version.
• 1.44 Mb floppy drive or CD-Rom (boot capability)
• 80386 (compatible) or higher CPU

[*] - ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM is 100% compatible with MS-DOS 5.0 or higher. Create a DOS bootdisk and place the ByteBack D.R.I.S.^TM executable there yourself. For instance, Windows XP offers a compatible DOS version through the diskette format option. See Installation for more information on bootdisk creation.