Viewing and Editing Objects

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YOU MUST BE ABSOLUTELY SURE OF WHAT AND WHERE YOU ARE WRITING!

Or you may completely lose all your data.

Before you can physically write anything on a disk, you need to enable writing.

To enable writing,

1 On the R-Studio main panel, select the Tools menu, then Settings, and select Enable Write on the Settings dialog box.
> The Editable: status will change to Yes from Read Only.

Now the object can be edited.

Locking and unlocking objects

It is possible to manually lock an object being edited in Text/hexadecimal Editor.

When an object is locked, Text/hexadecimal Editor has an exclusive access to it, and no other programs or Windows can make any changes on it. Text/hexadecimal Editor itself always locks the object itself before writing anything on the disk and then unlocks it. But sometimes locking/unlocking may take quite a lot of time, up to several seconds. That is why sometimes it is a good practice to lock an object while editing it in Text/hexadecimal Editor. This can be done by selecting Lock on the Tools menu.

When considering locking an object in Text/hexadecimal Editor, keep in mind the following:

· Starting from Windows 7, it is impossible to change data if it resides on a logical disk without locking the disk. If the data is on a place outside of any logical disk (on an unmounted partition or empty space), such lock is not necessary. Windows Vista, XP, or below do not have such restrictions.
· The Lock command tries to lock all logical disks on which the object being edited is placed. For a hard drive, those are all its logical disks, for a file that is a logical disk where it resides. And if a RAID is created from logical disks and a file is opened on that RAID, Text/hexadecimal Editor blocks all logical disks on which the file resides.

Moreover:

· If a logical disk is opened in Text/hexadecimal Editor, the Lock command locks the disk if there is no files opened by some other programs.
· If a hard drive is opened in Text/hexadecimal Editor, the Lock command locks the drive if all its logical disks can be locked. That may cause problems is one of the logical disks is a system one.

To view/edit an object,

1 Right-click the object and select View/Edit on the shortcut menu

Click to expand/collapse Other ways to view/edit the object

· Select the object and select View/Edit on the File menu

or

· Select the object and press the Ctrl+E keys
> A Text/hexadecimal Editor panel will appear

Click to expand/collapse R-Studio Text/hexadecimal editor

Click the panel regions to learn their functions.

Data Interpreter Properties Forward Back Stop (Esc) Find Previous Find Next Find Save Changes

Text view of the data

Panel view options

You may set which panels and bars to enable/disable.

Click to expand/collapse To enable/disable:

ANSI data

Select/clear ANSI on the View menu

OEM data

Select/clear OEMr on the View menu

UNICODE data

Select/clear UNICODE on the View menu

UNICODE+ data

Select/clear UNICODE+ on the View menu

Toolbar

Select/clear Toolbar on the View menu

Properties View

Select/clear Properties View on the View menu

Sectors View

Select/clear Sectors View on the View menu

Data Interpreter View

Select/clear Data Interpreter View on the View menu

Template View

Select/clear Template View on the View menu

Bookmarks View

Select/clear Bookmarks View on the View menu

Find Results View

Select/clear Find Results View on the View menu
2 View the information and make necessary changes

Select Save Changes on the Tools menu if you want to save changes.

Click to expand/collapse Other ways to save changes

· Select Save Changes on the File menu

or

· Press the Ctrl+S keys

Viewing

There are up to four tabs showing the data in different representations. Actual number of tabs depends on the object and property being viewed/edited.

Std

Exact attribute data. If the attribute is compressed, R-Studio decompresses it prior to showing.

Unlimited

Exact attribute data + free space of last cluster. If the attribute is compressed, R-Studio decompresses it prior to showing.

Direct

Actual data written on the disk. If the attribute is not compressed, it coincides with the Std representation.

Allocation

Resident part of the attribute.

You may view data in 4 various code pages: ANSI/OEM/UNICODE/UNICODE+ by switching on/off the respective code pages in the Code pages buttons or select the appropriate code pages on the View menu.

Patterns or Templates

You may select a pattern according to which the data will be parsed and shown in the parsed data pane. The Data Interpreter shows the data selected on the Template pane in various representations.

You may find the next or previous data that matches the pattern signature on the disk. Right-click the right pane of the editor and select either Find Template Signature Next or Find Template Signature Previous on the shortcut menu. You may also select these items on the Edit menu.

You may also create your own patterns to parse data from various objects.

Searching

To search for a particular string, click the Find, Find Next, or Find Previous buttons or the same items on the Edit menu, and specify the string on the Search dialog box.

Click to enlarge
Search dialog box

Click to expand/collapse Search options

Search for

HEX

Field for the string to search for in the hexadecimal representation

ANSI

Field for the string to search for in the ANSI encoding

OEM

Field for the string to search for in the OEM encoding

UNICODE

Field for the string to search for in the UNICODE encoding

Match case

Select this check box to make the search case-sensitive

Search area

From current position

Select this check box to start search from the current position

From start position

Select this check box to start search from the beginning of the object

From Address

Select this check box and specify the range in which the search is to be carried out

Search position

Exhaustive search

Select this check box to search the entire object

Search at offset

Select this check box and specify the sector offset from which the search will start

Reverse

Select this check box to start the search in the reverse direction

Find all

Select this check box to search for all instances of the string to search. Search results will be shown in the Find Results pane.

Search results are shown on the Find Results pane. You may easily move to the required found item by clicking the item.

Navigating

You may quickly move to a particular part of the object. To move to a particular part of the object being viewed/edited, enter the required offset in the Go to Offset field between the buttons.

Bookmarking

You may create bookmarks to easily move to those places. Right-click the cursor on the place you want to bookmark and select Toggle Bookmark on the shortcut menu. The list of bookmarks appears in the Bookmark pane. You may easily move to the required bookmark by clicking it in the list.

You may control bookmarks on the Edit menu.

Filling an area with a pattern

To fill an area with a pattern, select Fill on the Edit menu, and specify the pattern and area on the Fill dialog box.

Click to enlarge
Fill dialog box

Click to expand/collapse Fill options

Fill pattern

HEX

Field for the pattern to fill the area in the hexadecimal representation

ANSI

Field for the pattern to fill the area in the ANSI encoding

OEM

Field for the pattern to fill the area in the OEM encoding

UNICODE

Field for the pattern to fill the area in the UNICODE encoding

Fill range

From (hex)

Field for the start position of the area to fill with the pattern

To (hex)

Field for the end position of the area to fill with the pattern

3 Click the Save Changes button to save the changes

Click to expand/collapse Other ways to save the changes made

· Select Save Changes on the Edit menu

or

· Press the F2 key
> Viewer/Editor will save the changes on the object

YOU MUST BE ABSOLUTELY SURE OF WHAT AND WHERE YOU ARE WRITING!

Or you may completely lose all your data.

Selecting and saving an area in the Viewer/Editor

You may select an area in the Viewer/Editor panel and save it as a file.

To select and save an area in the Viewer/Editor panel,

1 Select Select... on the Tools menu and specify an area to select on the Select dialog box, or

Click the start point of the area and drag the mouse cursor to its end.

If you need to select an entire object, select Select All on the Tools menu or click the Ctrl+A key

Click to enlarge
Select dialog box
2 Select an appropriate item in the Tools menu to save the data in a required format and specify its file name

Select:

Save to Binary File...

to save the data in the binary format (default extension is .bin)

Save to Hexadecimal File

to save the data in the binary format (default extension is .hex)

on the Tools menu.

> Viewer/Editor will save the data in the file