Research And Implementation Of Disk Backup And Restore Operations On Windows 9x/NT Operating Systems

Under the DOS Operating System, the software GHOST is often used to backup and restore the data in the disk. At the crash time or cloning partition to reinstall a new system time, it can restore the source partition very fast. So GHOST has gotten a very high award in the restorage field. According to the real project, this paper takes the famous disk utility software GHOST as the original module. All the correlative knowledge is collected individually. The software can backup and restore all the Windows recognized file system volume. Including FAT16, FAT32, NTFS file system under the Windows Operating System which Windows 9x core kernel based on, or above. In addition, the software makes some reasonable improvement compared with the GHOST, special in the data security and integrity. Because Windows Operating System is multi-task Operating system using the protected mode, the software can backup or restore the data in a faster speed than GHOST. In the Windows Operating System based on NT core kernel, the speed is much faster specially.The paper illuminates the topic step by step. Firstly, it makes the brief introduce about the disk development history, disk physical storage structure, and the disk I/O access mode in a simple way. Secondly, it talks about some kinds of file system type. Such as the FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems, to give a beginning introduce. Thirdly, it discusses the disk partition table carefully, with the famous program fdisk's application, and concludes the fdisk program writing partition table method. Fourthly, it makes much more words in the certain file systems and correlative structures, analysing the FAT16, FAT32 file system in detail. Special in NTFS, which is not published by Microsoft Company for the business reason, the paper will discover this secret file system with many test datas. Making the FAT table data structure under the FAT file system, the MFT table data structure and data property under the NTFS file system more clear. These structures will be used flexibly in the backup and restore operation. At the last, the paper will talk about the difference in disk I/O access method between Windows 98 and Windows 2000, the two different kernel Operating Systems used in the PC field frequently in the native country. Inthe same time, the paper will discuss the interrupt technology, THUNK technology under the Windows 98 and the hardware independence under the Windows 2000. These technologies or character is used in accessing the disk with full efficiency.After presenting the main functions and their realizing principium, the paper makes up the special charters to talk about some other important fields. Such as, booting successfully after restoring the partition data, recognizing the volume characters, compressing data and checking data integrity, etc.To make the backuping and restoring operation better, the paper presents much test datas, and want to use the reliable data and the analyse on these data to get the best I/O memory size, the fastest I/O speed and the correct partition table modifying method. They will improve the software performance wholly.The technology discussed by the paper has been used in the certain project of the Shanghai Easier Information Technolongy Limited Company about the disk backup and restore operation. This software supports all Windows Operating System which Windows 9x and Windows NT core kernel based on and supports the IDE HDD and USB Storage Disk.