User's Manual

Solve problems
58
Thorough Analysis
A thorough analysis includes all the steps of the normal analysis. In addition,
your drives will be checked for physical defects.
Storage space on drives is divided into so-called sectors, which are usually 512
bytes in size each. In order to detect physical defects on a drive, the thorough
analysis checks each of these sectors. The length of this analysis depends on
several factors, including the size of the drive and the degree of fragmentation.
You should allow at least 5 to 20 minutes.
The exact number of steps and their sequence in the analysis depends on the file
system of each drive. The following table explains all possible steps.
Analysis step Explanation
Checking files and
folders
NTFS & FAT
Each element in the file system is analyzed to ensure that all files and
folders are present at their indicated locations.
Checking indices
Only NTFS
Indices are references to folders in the NTFS file system. If any of these
indices are damaged, the associated folders will not be displayed in the file
system.
If any or your files or folders have suddenly "disappeared", there is a good
chance that they will be recovered after repairing the file system.
Checking safety
descriptions
Only NTFS
Files and folders in an NTFS files system can be protected by so-called
safety descriptions, which block access by unauthorized users.
During the analysis, errors in these descriptions are found and corrected.
Checking file data
Only NTFS
All sectors of the drive that contain data will be checked. This will ensure
that no read errors take place when working with files,
If sectors are found that require multiple read attempts to successfully read
the data, the file data contained will be moved to a sector that is free of
errors. The sector will then be marked as defective in order to avoid future
problems.
Checking free disk
space
NTFS & FAT
All drive sectors that do not contain any files will be checked for error-free
readability.
If errors occur during this check, the sector in question will be marked as
defective to prevent files from being saved there in the future.