rcnelson@l_eld02.icaen.uiowa.edu (Ryan Christian Nelson) (11/15/90)
I'm currently (frantically!) trying to revive a paper for a friend of mine that she saved onto floppy disk right before her word processor (MacWrite, I think) said "I/O error. (restart)". I'm sort of the resident person around here to talk to for anything beyond the basic stuff. I've undeleted files and repaired disks for some other folks in similar situations, so I told her I'd give it a shot. However, mactools says I've got a media error, and won't look at the disk. It suggests I make a sector copy and work on IT. BUT... it seems EVERY SECTOR on the disk is flawed. Copy II 7.2 fails to read any of the blocks on the disk, so it writes a blank disk as the copy (bad block => empty sector) which does me no good. Bit copying the disk results in overwriting the beginning of every sector on the disk, which in in turn gives me a media error on the copy, as well as the original. I think I can get something using the track editor in copyII 7.2, but I don't know what it is. I only can see hex digits, not ASCII, and it gives me intermittant FF's in inverse video. I'm not familiar with the track editor in this version of mactools, it's a friend's "emergency kit" disk. Is my friend hosed, or what? Please reply immediately....you understand.
syzy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Don Lee) (11/16/90)
>I'm currently (frantically!) trying to revive a paper for a friend of >mine that she saved onto floppy disk right before her word processor >(MacWrite, I think) said "I/O error. (restart)". > >However, mactools says I've got a media error, and won't look at the disk. >It suggests I make a sector copy and work on IT. > >BUT... it seems EVERY SECTOR on the disk is flawed. Copy II 7.2 fails to read >any of the blocks on the disk, so it writes a blank disk as the copy >(bad block => empty sector) which does me no good. Bit copying the disk >results in overwriting the beginning of every sector on the disk, which in >in turn gives me a media error on the copy, as well as the original. > -- (I tried to mail this but my mailer kept bouncing it back so...) It may very well be that the entire disk has become unusuable as CopyIIMac seems to indicate to you, but I find that it's rarely that bad. Ususally, I find only a couple of bad sectors on a damaged disk - and in fortunate cases it's in the boot blocks and not one of the sectors being used by a needed file. From the recount of the attempts you've made, you don't seem to have some of the better (in my opinion) utilities for just this type of situation. My absolute favorite utility is 1st Aid (not Apple's Disk First Aid) by 1st Aid software - although I think they may have changed their name recently. I also use Rescue (part of MacTools Deluxe package) often. Many people apparantly like SUM II, but I've personally had more success with the two I mentioned. Unless the disk has for some reason become completely unusuable, I am usually able to recover people's files either completely intact or at least the text. (For a program that stores files in an unusal (un-readable text format - like drawing programs, spreadsheets, etc., just the text is pretty useless - but for word processing documents, it's pretty easy to reformat it back into the desired form.) Good Luck. ========================================================================== Don Lee: Internet: syzy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu | "By failing to prepare BitNet : syzy@crnlvax5 | you are preparing to CIS : 70731,3413 | fail." - ??? ==========================================================================