Configuring options

CAUTION: When you run ZAR for a first time, options are preset to a default values which allow for optimal performance in common cases. Incorrect manual configuration may lead to recovery failures.

When enabled, you will be prompted to choose between Simple and Advanced operation modes after selecting the partition to analyse. When disabled, program automatically starts a Simple Mode analysis once partition to work on is defined.

Controls if ZAR will attempt recovery of a files that were correctly erased prior to disk crash. Enable for mass undeletions, e.g. after a virus attack.

When enabled, bad sectors are considered "permanent". Once a sector read operation fails, bad sector number is stored. Subsequent attempts to read this sector will fail without actually attempting to read the sector, thus dramatically increasing analysis speed in some situations.

Allows autosave after each recovery stage in Simple Mode. Recommened setting is "Enabled". Final state (file and directory tree created during final processing stage) is not saved automatically. Save files are located under AUTOSAVE subdirectory of a directory where ZAR is installed (typically C:\Program Files\ZAR\AUTOSAVE).

With this setting enabled, program automatically attempts to analyze disk structures specific to Windows 2000 and XP during partition table analysis. It is only useful to disable this option when the disk has some physical damage that prevents reading of the LDM database.

Two parameter analysis methods are available - faster vs. slower method. Faster method uses lot of memory. Maximum memory usage observed during tests on actual disks was around 120Mb.

When "Limit to" option is enabled, volume parameters will be considered invalid if volume start sector deviates too much from the start of disk region you asked to analyze. This option can significantly increase parameter determination speed when enabled. It is safe to use when partition table is correct. When you are specifying a partition location manually with this option enabled, keep in mind that recovery will fail should you specify too broad area to analyze.

Ignore gaps in MFT up to X record(s) option allows better MFT reconstruction if some records are damaged (usually due to bad sectors) when enabled. Allowing very long gaps can cause recovery errors on fragmented MFT, because two different MFT fragments would be errorneously considered single large fragment.

Additionally Ignore small MFT fragments option, when enabled, dramatically reduces memory usage on heavily fragmented volumes. This can however impact directory tree reconstruction.

Skip X sector(s) after read error option is useful when disk surface is physically bad. Read operation attempted on the bad sector usually takes a long time to complete. Setting this option to something like 16 accelerates disk scan, because bad sectors usually tend to group close tougether.

Maximum number of passes on FAT option controls iterative process is used to reconstruct a directory tree on FAT filesystem. Usually, it takes two or three passes for the algorithm to converge. It is however possible that algorithm would fail to achieve a consistent solution (e.g. when there is a directly contradicting data on volume). This option specifies an iteration limit to avoid possible infinite looping. Once the limit is reached, directory tree refining stops.

Log file is used to store information about analysis progress. This information is required when volume is severely damaged and automatic reconstruction fails or for troubleshooting program problems. To use logging feature, you need to specify a file name to write log to and detail level ("Log level") of the events to record. Always set log level to "Normal" if you use this feature, unless specifically asked for a "Debug" log by technical support. Please note that a log file can grow quite large, depending on the number of files damaged partition contains.