yeung@reed.UUCP (Woodrow Yeung) (01/31/89)
Could anyone please tell me how a hard disk partition that was formatted can be recovered? I connected a second hard disk to my friends pc clone to test if it still works. He tried to format it (it was an ex macintosh Hyperdrive) as drive D but forgot about his own d partition. What sort of utilities can recover it. I believe that during a format of a hard disk the information is not destroyed but rather the directory changed, so this situation is not hopeless. How does one format a second disk? Trying to format it as drive e did not work. Please send e-mail to inform me of what to do. Thanks in advance. Woody Yeung yeung@reed tektronix!reed!yeung
silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andy Silverman) (02/01/89)
The only way to really recover a formatted disk is to have been using a tool PRIOR to the accidental formatting like PCTools' MIRROR/REBUILD or Norton's or Mace's Unformat. When you format a disk the FAT and root directory are wiped, and on a big hard drive FAT reconstruction can be really nasty. I believe that most of these tools can also attempt a reconstruction even without using the tool prior to the format, but with less chance of success... Andy Silverman silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu
marc@rna.UUCP (Marc Johnson) (02/08/89)
In article <11654@reed.UUCP> yeung@reed.UUCP (Woodrow Yeung) writes: >Could anyone please tell me how a hard disk partition that was formatted can >be recovered? ... If you only did a "format" (rather than a low-level sector format), you can recover it using the Paul MACE utilities. There are probably other manual ways using Norton Utilities, but MACE does it automatically, so I suggest you try that. > >How does one format a second disk? Trying to format it as drive e did not >work. Please send e-mail to inform me of what to do. Thanks in advance. > >Woody Yeung >yeung@reed >tektronix!reed!yeung Unless your system knows about the second drive, based either on your CMOS setup (if on an AT or AT clone) or the contoller switches or AUTO-Config via DEBUG on XTs, you won't be able to talk to a drive D or E. Go into SETUP (this is done many ways depending on the machine--check your manual), add the 2nd drive with the proper parameters (drive type= heads/cylinders), then attach the 2nd drive and reboot. It should be recognized, although the system will probably complain about a bad partition or somesuch. That's okay. Then use FINIT (or equivalent) to do a low-level format of the 2nd drive (should be known as D: unless you have more than 1 logical drive on your first disk), then an FDISK (or equiv.) to partition it and make it DOS-happy, and finally a FORMAT D: (don't forget the D:!) to do the high-level format. If this is confusing, e-mail me with specifics (hardware models and sizes, DOS version, etc.) and I'll try to help. marc =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = Marc Johnson BITNET: rna!marc@rockvax.bitnet = = Rockefeller Univ. Neurobiology UUCP: ...cmcl2!rna!marc = = New York City INTERNET: marc%rna@rocky2.rockefeller.edu = = (129.85.2.1) = = = = "Gimme the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock & roll = = ...and drift away" = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andy Silverman) (02/09/89)
I would like to point out that the Norton Utils WILL do an automatic unformatting of a disk, as opposed to the suggestion in a previous post that Mace will do this but Norton won't. Take a look at the advanced utils 4.5... Disclaimer: I have no personal interest one way or the other in either Mace or Norton. Andy Silverman Internet: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu CompuServe: 72261,531
malloy@nprdc.arpa (Sean Malloy) (02/10/89)
In article <338@rna.UUCP> marc@rna.UUCP (Marc Johnson) writes: >>How does one format a second disk? Trying to format it as drive e did not >>work. Please send e-mail to inform me of what to do. Thanks in advance. > . . . Then use FINIT (or equivalent) to do a low-level format of the 2nd >drive (should be known as D: unless you have more than 1 logical drive on >your first disk), . . . Not true. I added a disk to my system since the last weekend, and it doesn't work in that order -- the second physical drive is _always_ 'D:'. I have a Perstor PS180, and had a 20Mb disk formatted to 38Mb and split into two 19Mb partitions. I was adding a 40Mb disk to be formatted to 78Mb, split into three partitions. I expected the drive assignments to be: C: first logical drive on drive unit 0 D: second logical drive on drive unit 0 E: third logical drive on drive unit 0 F: first logical drive on drive unit 1 G: second logical drive on drive unit 1 What I got was: C: first logical drive on drive unit 0 D: first logical drive on drive unit 1 E: second logical drive on drive unit 0 F: third logical drive on drive unit 0 G: second logical drive on drive unit 1 Actually, I originally had the 20Mb disk as unit 0, so the disks were assigned drives as [Unit 0: C:, E:] and [Unit 1: D:, F:, G:], but it still works the same way. DOS assigns drive letters to the physical drives _first_, then assigns drive numbers to any logical drives in extended partitions. Sean Malloy Navy Personnel Research & Development Center San Diego, CA 92152-6800 malloy@nprdc.arpa