Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!philmtl!philabs!ttidca!woodside
From: woodside@ttidca.TTI.COM (George Woodside)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: One fried disk, coming up!
Message-ID: <12096@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 12 Apr 90 11:17:49 GMT
References: <5671.262220af@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Reply-To: woodside@ttidcb.tti.com (George Woodside)
Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica
Lines: 46

In article <5671.262220af@uwovax.uwo.ca> 4225_5132@uwovax.uwo.ca (Andrew Semple) writes:
>
>  I, with a short gap between exams, was looking through some of my old
>disks looking for some neato acc's to add to some of my most used disks (not
>owning a laser printer leaves me some room).  I came across one called
>Format 11.  Blithley clicking on it, and discovering that it modified the
>disk in some way, I tried ^C (too many days on the VAX) to get out and soon
>found out that this was a valid response to [Y or N].  In fact it meant
>yes.  That is alright, I thought, I have the disk physically write protected. 
>But to my dismay, upon leaving the program, I was met with the infamous "0
>bytes used in 0 items".  DiskDoctor and a few other cheapie disk utilities all
>barf on any commands to "open" or read the disk.  I conclude that my boot
>sector is fried, and I am up a creek without a pointer.
>
>  Any comments or help would be very much appreciated.

Format 11 is a disk formatter, which arranges the disk in an eleven
sector per track format. 

Personal Opinon: This is too far beyond specs to be reliable. Don't
store anything you really need on such a disk.

If your disk was write protected, the formatter should have been unable
to modify it. However, your note indicates that it is now unreadable. 

If you have access to any of the disk copiers, make a backup copy of
the disk first. Make a couple, in fact.

If only the boot sector is destroyed, you have hope. If the FAT and
Directory have been destroyed, you now have a scratch disk, suitable
for formatting.

The easiest way I know to rebuild the boot sector (pardon my humility)
is to use the REPAIR function of VKILLER (version 3.00 or higher,
posted here a few months ago, and available in the May, 1990 issue of
STart Magazine).

If you know how the disk used to be formatted, just enter the old
parameters in the dialog you get from clicking on REPAIR. If you don't
know, let it go figure out what it can read, and fix up the boot
sector. Then, if you find the FAT and Directory still intact, consider
yourself fortunate.
-- 
* George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *
* Path:       woodside@ttidca                          *
*   or:       ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside *