Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!yale!husc6!hao!boulder!murillo
From: murillo@sigi.Colorado.EDU (Rodrigo Murillo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How to recover trashed floppies?
Message-ID: <4245@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 11 Feb 88 17:10:12 GMT
References: <6109@iuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: murillo@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rodrigo Murillo)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 36

In article <6109@iuvax.UUCP> bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (Bob, Mon) writes:
>I need some help with a couple of trashed floppy disks.  The problem is as
>follows:

 [Summary:  The FAT and/or directory of this disk is bad, but there is
 data still out on the disk.]

> A diskcopy of the trashed disk
>claimed to be completely unused, with no file entries (erased or otherwise)
>in its directory.  So, nothing to unerase.

Any errors during the diskcopy?  The following solution assumes that DOS
could not correctly diskcopy the FAT, but did copy the data from the rest
of the disk anyway. 

>	Now, there _has_ to be a better way.  Maybe I can fake out the unerase
>with a different disk, then "recover" it sector by sector.  Is there anything
>better that I'm overlooking?  What about a program that just reads each sector,
>writes what it gets to a different file (on a different drive, of course),
>and ignores any errors (such as in the directory?)  Diskcopy isn't quite doing
>this, as it is trying to make an exact copy of the disk and I just want to
>put all its contents in a file or files somewhere else.  Any ideas??

I have faked out Norton before in a similar situation before.  As you suggest
Norton needs an erased file out there before it can start unerasing.  My work
around is to create a 0 byte file elsewhere, and then copy it to your thrased
disk, then delete it.  If you get this far,  you can select this file to
unerase and start writing sectors from anywhere to it.  Make sure to use a 0
byte file so that no data is overwritten during the copy.  This will only
work with NU, not QU.  Good luck.  If you get a program that just writes
sectors, let me know.
 
-- 
   ----------- Rodrigo Murillo, UC - Boulder  (303)761-0410 -----------
   murillo@boulder.Colorado.EDU   -or-  ..{hao|nbires}!boulder!murillo
   (Machines have less problems.  I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Worhol)