mike2@lcuxa.UUCP (05/21/87)
I have Version 4.0 of the Mace Utilities. The documentation addresses only unformatting of hard disks, not floppies. But, since it does not explicitly say that the floppies cannot be unformatted, I experimented with trying to do so. Not surprisingly, the experiment failed (after a PC-DOS 3.1 format). Furthermore, I then examined each sector of the reformatted disk, and found that the information was gone. Does this put the issue to rest? Mike Slomin !bellcore!lcuxa!mike2
ee163adl@sdcc18.ucsd.EDU (Teh Hsieh) (05/22/87)
In article <147@lcuxa.UUCP>, mike2@lcuxa.UUCP writes: > I have Version 4.0 of the Mace Utilities. The documentation addresses > only unformatting of hard disks, not floppies. But, since it does not > explicitly say that the floppies cannot be unformatted, I experimented > with trying to do so. Not surprisingly, the experiment failed (after > a PC-DOS 3.1 format). Furthermore, I then examined each sector of the > reformatted disk, and found that the information was gone. I have no doubts about this. In previous postings, the differences between a hard disk "high-level format" and a floppy "low-level format" under DOS were discussed. But, have you tried opening the drive door of the floppy during format, destroying only the first couple of tracks, and then recover from that? The disk has NOT been formatted completely in this fashion. All the other tracks would still be INTACT. Some of sectors may be unreadable (trashed during format), but after a diskcopy to a newly formatted floppy can fix this. Just ignore the error "disk may be unusable". THEN try the Mace Utilities to restore the FAT. I thought the original post of this discussion was that right after the data disk began to re-format, the formatting process was immediately stopped and that the disk did not format completely. -- I-Teh Hsieh ...!sdcsvax!sdcc6!sdcc18!ee163adl
luis@grinch.UUCP (luis) (05/26/87)
In article <147@lcuxa.UUCP> mike2@lcuxa.UUCP writes: >I have Version 4.0 of the Mace Utilities. The documentation addresses >only unformatting of hard disks, not floppies. But, since it does not >explicitly say that the floppies cannot be unformatted, I experimented >with trying to do so. Not surprisingly, the experiment failed (after >a PC-DOS 3.1 format). Furthermore, I then examined each sector of the >reformatted disk, and found that the information was gone. > >Does this put the issue to rest? > > Mike Slomin > !bellcore!lcuxa!mike2 Glad ya tried it out.. Sorry for any mis-information which I may have given earlier on the net... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luis Chanu "Live every day as if it were your last, UUCP: ihnp4!sun!aeras!grinch!luis because one day you will be right." UUCP: lll-crg!vecpyr!wjvax!grinch!luis -Benny Hill Disk-Claimer: That's not your disk, that's my disk. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------