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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!werner
From: werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Help - Kermit eats HD20 space
Message-ID: <4317@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 13:46:54 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.4317
Posted: Tue Nov 18 13:46:54 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Nov-86 21:26:12 EST
References: <511@uwmacc.UUCP> <289@apple.UUCP>
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 30
Keywords: Kermit, Bad filename, Lost disk space
Summary: "trust me" the program said ...


> One is Disk First Aid, a utility which will repair some problems with
> HFS volumes, among them loss of free space.

well, I have no complaints about the program 'working', however, I must say
that it is very cryptic about what it is doing.  When I ran it against my
DataFrame that could not be backed up successfully by a LoDown tape-drive,
Disk First Aid reported that "something is wrong - do you want me to fix it?"

I took a deep breath and said YES (shaking in my boots about losing my data
to this unspecified action) - "done" it reported in a fraction of a second
and I have had no problems since.  

Now, it wouldn't have been that difficult to have the program report the nature
of the problem and the nature of the repair it was proposing to perform,
because, quite honestly, wouldn't you have made fun of me if I had had to report
that something unspeakable had happened after I said YES ...?  (I would have
lectured YOU in the reverse case about letting "strange" programs do "undefined"
things to your hard disk - right after I would have stopped laughing about the
foolishness)

Now, sure, even if the program had provided the information, this would have
meant little protection against things not working out, but, at least, you'd
have an inkling on where to poke around with your debugging software ...

And before anyone draws an analogy about "asking your doctor about the
details of an operation" .... yes, I ask, and, besides, my lawyer will be
happy to sue over malpractice by the doctor but less than thrilled to hear
about what a program did to my hard-disk ....if that could be established at
all in the first place.