murillo@sigi.Colorado.EDU (Rodrigo Murillo) (04/17/88)
A friend has done the unthinkable... she formatted her entire hard disk.
I am familiar with the Norton Utility-type programs that allow format
recovery, IF AND ONLY IF you store the original FAT data prior to
the format. Well, the question is this: is there any way to recover
from a total format if the FAT has not been backed up? Any help
will be appreciated. Thanks.
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Rodrigo Murillo, University of Colorado - Boulder (303) 761-0410
murillo@boulder.colorado.edu | ..{ncar|nbires}!boulder!murillo
( Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol )hoctor@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu (04/18/88)
>A friend has done the unthinkable... she formatted her entire hard disk. >I am familiar with the Norton Utility-type programs that allow format >recovery, IF AND ONLY IF you store the original FAT data prior to >the format. Well, the question is this: is there any way to recover >from a total format if the FAT has not been backed up? Any help >will be appreciated. Thanks. As I understand it, the disk can be recovered (excluding the root direcory) by using a fairly simple algorithm. A program will scan the entire disk looking for sectors with the tell-tale directory entries of "." and "..". When these sectors are found, they are converted into directories and the information that is contained there is used to locate the files associated with it. Since the root directory does not have the "." and ".." entries, the root directory cannot be recovered in this manner. I believe, also, that this process is much more reliable if the files are not fragmented. So there; two good arguments for keeping few files in the root directory and keeping the disk defraged. hoctor@osiris
leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) (04/22/88)
In article <5442@sigi.Colorado.EDU> murillo@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rodrigo Murillo) writes:
<A friend has done the unthinkable... she formatted her entire hard disk.
<I am familiar with the Norton Utility-type programs that allow format
<recovery, IF AND ONLY IF you store the original FAT data prior to
<the format. Well, the question is this: is there any way to recover
<from a total format if the FAT has not been backed up? Any help
<will be appreciated. Thanks.
Buy the Mace Utilities package. It can recover quite a bit even if you
haven't backed things up. You will lose all the files in the root directory,
and may have a lot of trouble with any badly fragmented files. But it will
restore the subdirectory entries and from there you just need a *lot* of
patience.
To avoid this in the future, I suggest renaming FORMAT and creating a
FORMT.BAT file that calls it. Then you just check the parameters and
give an error message if they try to format the wrong drive! This works
well in our company...
--
Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."laba-5ac@web7f.berkeley.edu (Erik Talvola) (04/26/88)
In article <861@bucket.UUCP> leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) writes: >In article <5442@sigi.Colorado.EDU> murillo@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rodrigo Murillo) writes: ><A friend has done the unthinkable... she formatted her entire hard disk. > >To avoid this in the future, I suggest renaming FORMAT and creating a >FORMT.BAT file that calls it. Then you just check the parameters and >give an error message if they try to format the wrong drive! This works >well in our company... If anyone is interested, I have a public domain DOS format program called C-Format which will ONLY format drives A and B, will let you format disks in both drives at the same time (i.e. - it formats the disk in A and then goes right on to B), and also lets you format without verify, which takes half the time. It runs under PC-DOS 3.3 at least. I only have the executable, which lists the author's name and his BBS - no source. --------------------------------------------------- Erik Talvola laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu "...death is an acquired trait." -- Woody Allen ---------------------------------------------------