jonesg@pc.ecn.purdue.edu (Glynda Jones) (12/08/87)
I am looking for something that has more file recovery ability than Disk First Aid (Apple Product). I am particularly interested in recovery (full, partial--whatever) of files on floppies that somehow have become unreadable. Hard disk recovery is also important. Any info, comments, comparisons or criticisms would be greatly appreciated. Glynda Jones Davis Department of Freshman Engineering Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 One of the Blind Leading the Blind
kraut@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) (12/09/87)
In article <792@pc.ecn.purdue.edu>, jonesg@pc.ecn.purdue.edu (Glynda Jones) writes: > I am looking for something that has more file recovery ability than > Disk First Aid (Apple Product). I am particularly interested in > recovery (full, partial--whatever) of files on floppies that > somehow have become unreadable. Hard disk recovery is also > important. Any info, comments, comparisons or criticisms > would be greatly appreciated. MacZAP is, if not the ONLY, real DiskRecovery program, the ULTIMATE drp ... if you can't do it with ZAP you can pretty much forget it. Since release 4.5 MicroAnalyst also has a program called DiskDoctor which does the handholding and helps you figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. This program was written in response to criticism of the "difficult" interface and the fact that people don't seem to read the manual and the author got tired of receiving support phone-calls only to have to tell the people things that are clearly stated in the manual that they had to do. Now, whereas noone will dispute that any manual or user-interface can be improved, the problem here is really that solving a difficult problem often tends to get messy and no "nice and easy" solutions are available, i.e. you have to get "your hands dirty" and get involved with bits and hex codes... so the criticism of ZAP has been somewhat overdone, I believe (on the other hand, Les just recently feels that writing in C might be acceptable, rather than hacking in ASM, and the user-interface and manual produced by an ASM-hacker is often not for the weak-hearted :-) Anyway, the news is that whereas DiskDoctor now helps you analyze the problem and identify the actions you need to take, Les is now working on hooking the ZAP "action" code into the DiskDoctor "analysis" code, so that it will be even easier to fix things. However, this is such a non-trivial task that I would NOT recommend waiting for that to be completed before buying MacZAP- ---Werner PS: Disclaimers apply; I'm a friend of the troops at MicroAnalyst and sometimes drink their beer. PSPS: If I ever get out from under all these deadlines at work I may even find time to again post the latest ZAP recovery and copy parameters. if you send me your pleas and requests by Email the matter would surely rise a couple of points in priority in my TBD-stack... (-: -- werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (prefered address) kraut@ut-ngp.uucp (if you must)