norteman@gemvax.dec.com (Karen J. Norteman) (10/09/90)
Can someone please give advice on how to retrieve information from a floppy that's been munched on? Here's what happened and what I've tried to do: I have a borrowed Outbound Portable. It has a reproducible problem with its floppy drives: it corrupts files that are kept in folders on floppies. The file I was working on was an MS Word 4.0 data file used for a mailing list. It was kept in a folder. When I tried to save to the floppy after editing the file, I kept getting "Disk error; cannot save" messages. When I tried to save to the silicon disk instead, I got the same messages. The saved files appeared on the desktop, though. When I opened one of these, I got 512 characters of gibberish, none of which even remotely resembled the file. I then took the floppy and tried to read it on my regular Mac Plus. The first try said that the disk was unreadable. The second try brought the disk up to the desktop, but no files at all were visible on it, even though the information bar said there was 550K of information on the floppy. Next, I tried Rescue from Mac Tools Deluxe. It scanned the disk and said that the catalog was bad. It attempted to salvage the files on the floppy (it could identify the type and creator correctly), and restored some of the Word files. When I tried to open one, my system crashed. When I restarted the system, it came up okay... but the floppy was still "blank". The salvaged files all contained gibberish. This is valuable data, and I really need to get it back. Any suggestions? In the meantime, if you're getting an Outbound Portable, I highly recommend the machine overall... but only if you get it with a hard disk. Avoid the floppy drive! Karen J. Norteman Digital Equipment Corporation Maynard, MA norteman@gemvax.enet.dec.com