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From: georgf@polari.UUCP (George Forsman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How to recover file when size=0?
Message-ID: <1977@polari.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 90 01:04:56 GMT
References: <3520@tymix.UUCP> <1990May2.213153.19997@smcnet.smc.edu> <3155@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Reply-To: georgf@.UUCP (George Forsman)
Organization: PolarServ, Seattle WA
Lines: 36

In article <3155@rodan.acs.syr.edu> amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen) writes:
>In article <1990May2.213153.19997@smcnet.smc.edu> byoder@smcnet.smc.edu (Brian Yoder) writes:
>>In article <3520@tymix.UUCP> pnelson@hobbes.UUCP (Phil Nelson) writes:
>>>The end result is that my file now has length = 0. Norton says there is 
>>>nothing to read, but I don't believe him. Can anyone help?
>>
>>I wish you had included more information about exactly what happened, but from
>>the sounds of it you might be able to use Norton UnErase to manually
>>unerase the part of the file you downloaded.  
>>Brian Yoder
>
>   The more precise procedure, is to come up with informations strings of text
>or data that are in the file, a phrase or something (it helps but isn't needed)
>You'll select the whole data partition, & search for that string.  When finding

If I recall correctly, the original problem was that the disk filled up.  This
mean that ALL free clusters were originally a part of this file. To
recover the whole file simply write a program that opens a file, and seeks to
a point that would encompass the entire disk free space, force THAT to be 
the EOF (under MS-DOS, write a 0 length block) and close the file.  Note that
this procedure >never writes to the file<. The resulting file should contain
the data that originally filled the clusters.  I have not done this myself,
so it'd be a good idea to try it out on, say, a floppy.

Another idea is to run CHKDSK.  If the clusters where just dis-associated(?)
with the file, then CHKDSK will show them as a lost chain, and happily create
a FILE0000.chk for you that contains those lost clusters.

Good Luck!


-- 
George Forsman  |  georgf@polari.uucp | "I know that you think you understand
...!uw-beaver!sumax!polari!georgf     | what you thought I said, but I am not
--------------------------------------| sure you realize that what you heard
Disclaimer: Ask me! I'll deny it!     | is not what I meant."