Important: If you wish to work with a disk following forensic guidelines (meaning: nothing may be changed on the disk that is examined), you MUST start DiskPatch in Forensic mode. If this is the case, please make sure to read the manual parts that explain the Forensic mode.

Things to consider

• DiskPatch runs in DOS. DiskPatch can not be run from any other operating system; not from a DOS window or emulated DOS session. DiskPatch comes with a DOS startup diskette that allows you to get started quickly, without having to worry about creating DOS diskettes.
  If you would like to create a bootable USB key (to use instead of the diskette or CD/DVD), open the "Create a bootable USB key for DiskPatch" document from the DiskPatch Start menu and follow the directions.
• Make sure you understand the conventions used in this User Guide.
• If the partitions you need to repair were originally created with Windows Vista (tm) or another more recent version of Windows, read this first.
• When performing a partition table recovery make sure you have a good overview of which partitions you want to be present after the recovery. You should have some idea about their location, size and type (FAT, NTFS etc.). In the phase where you select the partitions for repair, make sure you select all partitions that should be present after the recovery, including the ones that are intact and that you currently have access to.
• DiskPatch can theoretically access disks as large as 2 Terabytes *IF* your system BIOS or the BIOS of the hard disk controller can address disks that large. If your system can only access the first 128 Gb of a disk, DiskPatch will also be limited to accessing the first 128 Gb.
• Note: As BIOS problems are sometimes the cause for data loss, DiskPatch will try to detect a possible 128 Gb boundary problem (the absence of 48 bit LBA addressing support) that your BIOS may have. If DiskPatch detects such a problem, you should consult your motherboard manufacturer to see if a BIOS update is available to resolve this issue. If no BIOS or firmware updates are available, an add-on disk controller is a good solution.
• DiskPatch will only work with the first 4 physical hard disks in your system. If you have attached more than 4 physical hard disks, and the disk that needs repairs is not one of the first 4, you need to (temporarily) change the configuration of your system.
• If you suspect or have evidence that physical disk problems (such as surface damage) are the cause for data loss while the BIOS still detects the disk, your should clone the disk as soon as possible.

Post repair considerations

After the repair, ALWAYS verify the contents of the drives before you attempt to boot from a repaired disk! Access the drive(s) read-only! To verify FAT and FAT32 partitions, use an MS-DOS boot diskette. To verify the contents of NTFS partitions we recommend the read/write driver NTFS4DOS from http://www.avira.com (free for personal use).
Never let 'scandisk' or 'chkdsk' run on the repaired partitions, not even if the operating system suggests it.

Other advanced ways to access a repaired disk:

• a Linux bootable CD/DVD can be used (can access FAT, FAT32 and NTFS) - For example the Knoppix distribution.
• BartPE can be used to create a bootable Windows XP CD/DVD.