#harddisk
Odell,
There are two sector editors in our libraries that should help you. One,
DiskX, is by Steve Tibbetts. Steve is around here a lot, and you could
probably get help using that one. The other is SECTORAMA. Both are god, but
they are not quite the same in the way you use them.
The KEY you are reading about is the sector number. On a floppy, that key has
to be between 0 and 1759. Your hard disk will have many more.
When you got the "Key 18468 already set" message, it meant that sector 18468
was being used by another file. In other words – you had two different
programs claiming that sector, hence two files had gotten intermingled.
Some people have restored hard drives with DISKDOCTOR, but I'd keep that as a
last resort.
One thing you could do is to find out which program is using the bad sector.
Then, with SECTORAMA, find out thehash value of that program. It will be a
number between 6 and 78. Then, count the longwords from the beginning of the
directory to the one you need, and replace the number in that longword with
zeros. That will lose the file that is in trouble, but will save the rest of
your disk. Should this file not bethe first in the hash chain, it will also
lose the whole chain, so be aware of what you are getting into.
This is pretty complicated, and I really would not recommend it if there is any
other way!! (But it can be done.)
Betty