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Copy Sectors

A tool for creating disk images, clones, writing images back to disk, and copying different disk objects. Write is performed directly to the destination, the operation may not be undone. For changes to take effect in OS you may probably have to reload computer. See Volume locking also.

Source and Destination

ButtonPurpose
DeviceSelect Device, Logical disk (volume), Image as source/destination sectors
PartitionSelect Partition as source/destination sectors (use Device button to select the disk before),
 To select the entire current device/disk/RAID double click the topmost item in the partition list
FileUse file as source bytes / a destination (alternatively Device · Open Image to use file as sectors)
EditorUse the object opened in the Disk Editor window as source bytes
SelectedUse selected block of the Disk Editor object as source bytes

Source fields Start Sector, End Sector, Number of Sectors, Start Byte, End Byte, Size in Bytes are filled in automatically on source selection by buttons. Fields may be altered manually in order to specify a portion of the source object to copy. If the source is a file or Editor object then fields are specified in bytes.

Destination field Start Sector is also filled in automatically on destination selection by buttons Device, Partition. Start Sector is specified relative to the beginning of the selected destination object. Start Sector of the source always corresponds to Start Sector of the destination (regardless copying direction).

If RAID is constructed then it may be used as a source/destination.

Using the Device button you may select a file (disk image) as a source or a destination. Then you may specify parameters available for a disk only.

If Editor or Selected is used as a source then some logical errors (such as invalid cluster or sector numbers) are silently ignored.

Parameters

Log file may be used for tracking already copied ranges and for getting numbers of sectors with errors. The sector numbers are absolute to the source disk.

The option "use log to continue copying" may be used to continue copying automatically from the last position. It also may be used for multi-pass copying (including non-sequential copying in different directions) to copy sectors skipped when previous passes. The option is available in Professional Edition only.

The option "Retry copying bad sectors from log" may be used to retry copying bad sectors from log when all skipped sectors are already copied. The log may not be used for continue copying bad sectors (on each pass bad sectors are being copied from the beginning).

The button "Parameters" allows setting up device I/O parameters to handle errors. Changing some parameters (Jump over sectors, Auto retries number, I/O buffer size) when using log to continue copying may cause copying of the previously skipped sectors (e.g. if you decrease the parameter Jump over sectors).

Reverse copy: copy backward (from the end to the beginning) to create an image of a disk with problems.

Double thread: perform read and write operations in parallel threads to increase the speed. Do not use the option for copying disks with errors.

The field Continue from sector/byte specifies the position to continue copying. The position is relative to source start. When copy in reverse direction copying starts previos to the specified position and goes backward (e.g., if set to 10 then sector 9 will be copied first and copying will go to the beginning).

The option Lock the source for copy is for locking the volumes located over the source area to prevent modification of the source during copying (Windows only).