#HD's go bad
Gus;
This will be a long one, but I believe it may be beneficial to all if
you would consider responding to this further. Maybe some lessons can
be learned and save others from a possible similar fate.
>> plus the fact you run mirror (as far as I can remember), you had
>> (note the past tense – too late now) a good chance of restoring the FAT.
While I had a good booting system, I stopped updating the mirror
(it was called image actually). So is it possible that I can retrieve
something?
The issue with the missing jumper may have been part of the cause, but
certainly not all. I now have no (usable) access to either drive. I was
using one as a backup for the other during this time.
One of them (the original) refuses to be recognized by the BIOS. The
other will not currently boot. It simply states HD failure. Press F1
to resume.
The recent history follows. I am on a separate system
(old faithful) writing this. Without it, I would be cut off from the
world because of no access to my HD's.
I needed to restore some data (.3DS file) from tape to the HD. I attempted to
put it onto the "E" drive. The tape software said "operation successful".
I did a dir, and there were a large number of strange files on the
list, but the one I wanted was at the end. I believe I changed to the
C drive, and back to E, and when I looked again, all of the files were
gone except my one I had restored, and it was 0 bytes.
So I did it a second time. Same results.
So I did it a third time but installed to the C Drive. Did a dir, and
the file was there. I needed to install some additional ram for the
rendering I was going to do. So I turned off the computer. Installed
the RAM. Upon boot up, it failed to find the hard disk, and said
system files are missing. At this point, I put in a boot floppy and booted
from it. I can read the C drive by doing a DIR, but cannot access
anything on the drive. If I attempt to run anything, it gives a fail
message Abort, Retry, XXXXX, Quit.
It also says the system files are missing. From the A drive, I typed
"sys c:" and got an error message of "cannot put system on this type
of drive or something to that effect.
I did an Fdisk, and found that instead of reporting a DOS disk, it had
some strange characters in that column. I think it was 4 little
square boxes and four hearts alternating. I think I jabbed it in the
heart or something. 😉
Can I use the "image" to get back a week in time? If so, how?
>> I'm almost certain it has nothing to do with cables and/or
>> connections. More likely, you have some program trashing system memory.
I definitely agree with you. I had not had a problem with this system
until I had NT on it. I don't recall if I had problems with NT, or
just wanted to uninstall it, but either way, I believe NT has
something to do with this.
In that direction, I attempted to use PCSHELL to go in and view and
possible undeleted some NT hidden file(s), and see what I could about my
SYSTEM files that were reported missing.
PCSHELL cannot get started. Probably because of the Report By FDISK
that it is not a DOS disk. I was able to make a copy of the
autoexec.bat, and config.sys file to a floppy.
Is there any hope of getting back to where I was without formatting the
HD at this point?
I will await any possible response. Thanks!, …….Dennis