Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!littlei!leonardo.intel.com!davidl
From: davidl@leonardo.intel.com (David D. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: 1/2 system disappeared
Message-ID: <760@gandalf.littlei.UUCP>
Date: 11 Dec 89 19:14:08 GMT
References: <4ZUV61S00WBLI26mkL@andrew.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@littlei.UUCP
Lines: 39

In article <4ZUV61S00WBLI26mkL@andrew.cmu.edu>, bh11+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Braddock John Hathaway) writes:
> Yesterday [... t]here was a
> system crash, and the next time that I booted up,
> roughly half of my system folder was gone.  Just gone.
> 
> Weird.  Alphabetically, everything after PMUSUSER.TXT [...]
> is missing. 
> 
> The very weirdest thing about this is that the system
> still boots from my hard disk, and recognizes that the
> server folder is the current system folder . . . even
> though there is no file named "system" in the folder!

I had this EXACT thing happen to me once.  You don't mention what kind of 
hard disk you have, but mine was a LaCie Cirrus 30 and the problem was in
the disk driver.  If your problem is the same as mine was, I have the 
following fix:

1) The files are probably 100% recoverable with SUM.  If you can, borrow
another hard disk and use SUM to recover all the files on your LaCie disk 
to the other one, then erase the LaCie disk and copy everything back.  I
did this and it took only an hour or so to recover everything.

2) The source of the problem may be a subtle bug in the LaCie software.  It
is fixed in more recent versions.  (I was running a really crufty old version 
when the bug bit me, so I have no idea when it was fixed.)  Get the most 
recent software from LaCie and this won't happen again.

Thanks are due to Brian Seligmann for spotting and fixing my problem.  Hope
this helps you.

NOTE:  This is the only problem I have EVER had with the excellent LaCie
software and I continue to unconditionally recommend LaCie's hard disks and
software.  (Unsolicited testimonial.)

- David D. Levine, Intel IMSO Tech Pubs
  davidl@leonardo.intel.com
  "Mr. LaForge, when I turned this ship over to you, it was in one piece!"