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Recovering "zero k" files from old LaCie HDD?

Submitted by SpaceBoy on May 1, 2007 - 5:03am. 680x0 Macs and Lisa

Hi guys,

I hope you're not getting sick of me suddenly flooding the board with questions!

So, tonight I dug out my old LaCie ZFP hard disk, which I originally bought used somewhere around 1995, after spending the summer picking weeds to raise the $150 needed to buy this 150-meg drive. I used it for years on my old Mac Plus, and it was the repository of all my gradeschool / Jr. High writing projects, short stories, letters, games, etc. Over the years, I've been moving one folder (with all of my old fiction writings) from Mac to Mac, and I've got a safe copy of that folder on a few drives. However, I don't have copies of all of my old non-fiction files, so when I hooked the LaCie drive up to my Color Classic, I was delighted to see that they were all still there... and then crushed to see that I couldn't open any of them! In the finder, I can see all of the old documents, programs, etc., but they are all listed as being "zero k" in size. Even stranger, the drive (again, a 150 meg HDD) is being reported to Norton Utilities 2.0 as being only 2.9 megs!

When I run Norton Disk Doctor on the drive, it always reports that the "BTree Header" needs to be fixed. Is this a clue?

Any help or ideas would be wonderful - I'd really hate to lose all that writing...

Thanks,

Huxley

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grannysmith's picture

Clawback

Submitted by grannysmith on May 1, 2007 - 5:50am.

If your drive has had no housekeeping performed in a dozen-or-so years, but plenty of saving activity (writing and re-writing), there are two immediate needs apparent. First, retire Norton to a drawer. Second, get a copy of DiskWarrior 2.1.1 as a matter of urgency. DW is a file utility, not a disk utility as it is often misappreciated as being. DW does nothing for your drive's logical structures, viz. the several partitions according to Apple that contain the data necessary for a drive's operation, only one of which need be the 'volume' that mounts on a desktop.

DW is unique, and not to be confused with any disk-formatting and drive-partitioning utility. DW cannot function if the disk partitions are not already intact. It will build you a new file directory from scratch by making a census of your data, comparing the new directory and the discovered file addresses, allowing you to open files on a simulated desktop, and when you are happy that your data are all there, asking you whether to overwrite the corrupt existing directory with its newly-made directory, or not. DW will, most often, pick up and identify even the headless, smoking corpses of files that would be lost by any other utility. DW does not attempt to repair your old file directory, and pile putrefaction upon corruption in the doing. If necessary, then DW also tizzies up the boot blocks (pointers to your valid System Folder).

If you get a retail CD of DW for OSs 7.6.1 to 9.2.2 (bootable in those two as well as 8.6 and 9.1), it comes with a companion utility PlusOptimizer, an effective file defragmentation program to be used after DiskWarrior has worked its magic.

de

» Apple IIe; (68K) 17DT & 4PB; (PPC) 13DT & 3PB; (G3) 6DT. System 6.0.8 to OS 10.4.x

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Re: Clawback

Submitted by SpaceBoy on May 1, 2007 - 5:53am.
grannysmith wrote:
If your drive has had no housekeeping performed in a dozen-or-so years, but plenty of saving activity (writing and re-writing), there are two immediate needs apparent. First, retire Norton to a drawer. Second, get a copy of DiskWarrior 2.1.1 as a matter of urgency. DW is a file utility, not a disk utility as it is often misappreciated as being. DW does nothing for your drive's logical structures, viz. the several partitions according to Apple that contain the data necessary for a drive's operation, only one of which need be the 'volume' that mounts on a desktop.

DW is unique, and not to be confused with any disk-formatting and drive-partitioning utility. DW cannot function if the disk partitions are not already intact. It will build you a new file directory from scratch by making a census of your data, comparing the new directory and the discovered file addresses, allowing you to open files on a simulated desktop, and when you are happy that your data are all there, asking you whether to overwrite the corrupt existing directory with its newly-made directory, or not. DW will, most often, pick up and identify even the headless, smoking corpses of files that would be lost by any other utility. DW does not attempt to repair your old file directory, and pile putrefaction upon corruption in the doing. If necessary, then DW also tizzies up the boot blocks (pointers to your valid System Folder).

If you get a retail CD of DW for OSs 7.6.1 to 9.2.2 (bootable in those two as well as 8.6 and 9.1), it comes with a companion utility PlusOptimizer, an effective file defragmentation program to be used after DiskWarrior has worked its magic.

de

You're a genius! I live and die by DiskWarrior on OS X, but it didn't even occur to me that they had versions old enough to be useful in this situation!

Thanks for the tip - I'll see what I can dig up...

Huxley

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