[comp.sys.atari.st] WordPerfect & crosslinked files

grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) (03/12/90)

From article <90030820215399@masnet.uucp>, by derek.linfield@canremote.uucp (DEREK LINFIELD):
> Have you checked your HD since you installed WP? I'm curious to see if
> others are having the crosslinked file problem I'm having.

I can confirm that on my hard disk partition with WordPerfect installed
I have found (via DLII) some 'lost clusters'.  I recovered them and
found that they contained the text of Wordperfect documents.  I believe
they came from WP's .TMP files, and maybe they weren't cleaned up
properly after exiting the program.  It's possible that WP may at some
time have been exited incorrectly.

The situation seems to have improved since I got the August 89 version
of WP.  I don't know if that's just luck, though.

Graham

-- 
Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK
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hcj@lzsc.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (03/13/90)

In article <2345@syma.sussex.ac.uk>, grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) writes:
> From article <90030820215399@masnet.uucp>, by derek.linfield@canremote.uucp (DEREK LINFIELD):
> > Have you checked your HD since you installed WP? I'm curious to see if
> > others are having the crosslinked file problem I'm having.
> 
> I can confirm that on my hard disk partition with WordPerfect installed
> I have found (via DLII) some 'lost clusters'.  I recovered them and
> found that they contained the text of Wordperfect documents.  I believe
> they came from WP's .TMP files, and maybe they weren't cleaned up
> properly after exiting the program.  It's possible that WP may at some
> time have been exited incorrectly.
> 

Any program that has files OPEN for writing that crashes, or is rebooted
will lose clusters for you. This is because the directory isn't updated
until the final close.  Up until then, each write just keeps allocating
and filling clusters.

You may see this more with WP because it is doing document backups periodically
for you. (My wife thinks this is its best feature). So there is more
likelyhood of it writing when you forget and reboot without exiting WP.

I use fsck.prg to fix this kind of problem.  It may not fix everything, but
it does this very well.

Howard C. Johnson
ATT Bell Labs
att!lzsc!hcj
hcj@lzsc.att.com