                           Monir's Data Retriever 1.06
                     General purpose data Recovery software
                            By Monirul Islam Sharif
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ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
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This README.TXT file is provided with MDR and should be distributed with it.
I have tried to put last minute information, usage rules and other
information int for the convinience of the user. The software itself does
not contain any online help.

For updates and other information and related utilities please visit my
web site:
	http://members.xoom.com/monirdomain

As this software was intended to be released a long time ago, and I have
delayed a lot, I am having to write this document in a very short time and 
may contain mistakes.

RELEASE NOTES
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MDR was to be the FAT16 version of data recovery program MRECOVER. But I've
renamed it as it is not at all related in its workings and capabilities.
Although I sat down to make this for CIH effected people it can also be used
for other damages (and also recovery of data from Formatted hard disks) to
a certain extent. 

I want to tell you that this not actually equivalent to a full blown general
purpose recovery utility at as it has limited capabilities. I had several
plans for it but at the end found them to become not at all feasable (I mean
complexity compared to performance). Here are the important things to note:

* MDR currently only retrieves data from FAT16 primary partitions. I'll think
  of adding other partitions later.

* MDR will only be able to extract files fully intact if they were not
  fragmented (I know that this is a very poor way, but my other means failed).
  So I just hope that you guys are lucky enough to have most of your
  important files that way.

* MDR doesn't do all the things that MRECOVER does. That means that you will
  have to use MRECOVER to first fix your partition table. If you had one 
  or more partitions then please recover the table with MRECOVER first. If 
  you had one only you still need to mark it in the partition table, before
  using MDR. Once MDR finds a valid partition it will proceed with retrieval.

* MDR might not work properly if the cluster size is assumed wrong, so please 
  make sure if it is done correctly
		250MB - 500MB   8KB
		500MB - 1000MB  16KB
                1000MB - 2000MB 32KB

* Sorry for this but you will need seperate storage to keep the retrieved
  files. Although I had plans of not having to do this (I thought of creating
  a new assumed FAT that would be placed in the original location), but that
  technique didn't proceed well.

* MDR will works good with 8GB hard drives (although it should work with
  larger drives as it fixes the primary partition only).

* MDR uses a DOS-extender to use more memory than the first one megabyte.
  This DOS-extender of Borland will not work properly if you have EMM386.EXE
  with NOEMS option (computer will restart). Please use the RAM option.

I've added a good interface unlike MRECOVER or MRECOVER XL, and in the future
I guess I have plans of combining everything and adding a lot of new things
to make a general purpose data recovery software available to all (a big
dream I guess...)

What's version 1.05 about?
--------------------------
This version is a small update to the original. I've fixed the run-time
error 215 problem that appears on some computers (due to an arithmetic
overflow).



Well this is it. Hope the program will be of some help. But I hope atleast
it was worth the wait to some extent.


Thanks.

-Monirul Islam Sharif
Author of  MRECOVER
Student, Dept. of Computer Science, Dhaka University, Bangladesh.
E-mail:  monir@innocent.com
E-mail2: misharif@citechco.net
-Monirul Islam Sharif

Update History:
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28 June  1999  - MDR 1.0   First release
30 June  1999  - MDR 1.05  Bug fixed release
2  July  1999  - MDR 1.06  Run-time error 215 bug fixed.

NOTE: Please use visit my site for the latest MRECOVER or MRECOVER XL update.
