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- From: jimw@brian.tv.tek.com (Jim Weitenhagen)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
- Subject: Help! Trashed my hard disk!
- Message-ID: <1992Nov6.014254.13972@tvnews.tv.tek.com>
- Date: 6 Nov 92 01:42:54 GMT
- Article-I.D.: tvnews.1992Nov6.014254.13972
- Sender: news@tvnews.tv.tek.com (news user)
- Distribution: usa
- Organization: Television Systems Division, Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
- Lines: 38
-
- Sorry if this appears twice, but I don't think my first attempt to post
- worked.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Help! I have managed to apparently thoroughly trash my hard disk, and
- am wondering if my only recourse is to reformat. I would appreciate some
- advice from any gurus out there.
-
- First of all, here is my system:
-
- 386DX - 25 MHz, Micronics motherboard, no cache
- Dos 3.3
- 40 MB IDE (Teac) partioned as C: 30 MB and D: 10 MB
-
- I just upgraded from 1 MB to 5 MB and decided to install a disk cache using
- SMARTDRV (the version that came with Windows 3.0). I did that and then
- ran the QAPLUS diagnostics which came with my system to just
- poke around a little. Without thinking, I ran the memory test included
- in that package. After I quit, my C: drive was thoroughly trashed.
- I assume that I shouldn't have done the memory diagnostic while SMARTDRV
- was active, but I don't know exactly what I might have done to the disk.
- If I do a DIR on C:, I get "File not found" and a volume label
- of !"#$%&'()* which is in nicely ascending ASCII order. It won't boot, of
- course. I am speculating that I overwrote large areas of the disk, like
- the operating system, directories and maybe the FAT. The D: partition is
- OK.
-
- So am I screwed? I don't mind reformatting except that there is some
- data that isn't backed up and would be a pain to reproduce. Is there any
- hope of recovering some of the data? I don't have Norton Utilities or
- PC Tools, but would get either one if there was a good chance I could
- recover some data. I understand there is at least one other copy of the FAT
- somewhere on the disk. How could I access it? Any ideas?
-
- Thanks in advance,
-
- Jim Weitenhagen
- jimw@tv.tv.tek.com
-