murray@andromeda.rutgers.edu.rutgers.edu (Murray Karstadt) (08/06/89)
At one time or another most of us will get the feared: "This disk is unreadable Do you want to initialize it?" The answer is of course to have a good backup and not worry about message. But what are your favorite tricks if you not have a good backup. I usually end up ejecting the disk and reinserting it. If that fails I try the disk with a different drive. If this does not work I'll rebuild the desktop (Option + Command key) Lastly I'll try Disk First Aid, but none of the above seems to work out that well. thanks for any info murray
cyosta@taux01.UUCP ( Yossie Silverman ) (08/06/89)
In article <Aug.5.16.14.32.1989.8334@galaxy.rutgers.edu> murray@andromeda (Murray Karstadt) writes:
.
.At one time or another most of us will get the feared: "This disk is unreadable
.Do you want to initialize it?"
.The answer is of course to have a good backup and not worry about message. But
.what are your favorite tricks if you not have a good backup. I usually end up
.ejecting the disk and reinserting it. If that fails I try the disk with a
.different drive. If this does not work I'll rebuild the desktop
.(Option + Command key) Lastly I'll try Disk First Aid, but none of the above
.seems to work out that well.
.
.thanks for any info
.murray
A trick that has worked for me in MOST cases is to heat the disk up a little.
I do this by placing it on my mac (when I owned a Mac+ which got quite hot
on top) or between the Hard Disk and the bottom of the mac (nowadays). The
disk will usually read after this. In many cases it remembers that it was
readable and is still so even when it cools down! I read somwhere long ago
that this works because the diskette drives change their alignment slightly
after some time has passed and they "warm up", a diskette recorded in a
warm drive will not read too well in a cold one, and visa versa. I don't
recomend using a toaster to heat the dikettes up (never tired it, but somehow
doubt that it will work).
- Yossie
--
Yossie Silverman What did the Caspian sea?
National Semiconductor Ltd. (Israel)
cyosta%taux01@nsc.nsc.COM or RPR1YOS@TECHNION.BITNET
NSA LSD FBI KGB PCP CIA MOSAD NUCLEAR MI5 SPY ASSASSINATE SDI -- OOCLAY ITAYnakata@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Lance Nakata) (08/13/89)
I'm way behind on comp.sys.mac, so this answer is a bit late.
However, some of this info might be useful in the future. Here at
AIR, we use Copy II Mac 7.2 (from Central Point Software) to makes
sector-copy duplicates of {damaged, unreadable, not-a-Mac-disk}
floppies. THIS IS A CRITICAL STEP. You should NEVER work on the
original disk when it's possible to work on a copy. Otherwise, you're
begging for trouble as the chance of making an error can be high.
Besides, Copy II Mac sometimes manages to massage the data back into a
readable format. If not, run Disk First Aid 1.4.2 (from Apple) *on
the copy*. Experience has shown us that DFA may not repair the
original disk but sometimes is perfectly happy to work on a sector
copy. If DFA fails, try Symantec Utilities for Macintosh 1.1
(SUM--obviously from Symantec Corp). Alternatives to SUM include 1st
Aid Kit (from 1st Aid Software) and PC Tools Mac (Central Point
Software again), though we don't use them as often as SUM.
This is a fairly brief description of what to do, and there's a LOT
more that could be said. But without resorting to a 30K message, it's
probably safe to say the aforementioned programs will handle the
majority of Mac disk and file recovery cases. A long time ago, Steve
Costa of BMUG (Hey, Steve, you still out there?) wrote a document
describing what to do and which software to use. However, I don't
know when the doc was last updated (any BMUG member care to clue us
in?). My consulting group does a fair number of floppy and hard disk
recoveries each week, but I'd bet that BMUG does even more.
Good luck, and yes, backups are still your best protection (recovery
software notwithstanding).
Lance Nakata
Academic Information Resources
Stanford University
nakata@jessica.stanford.edu