From: IO20706@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Help.....disk error
Date: 10 Nov 92 16:08:10 GMT
Organization: University of Maine System









Hello everyone,
                      I have a problem, and since you are the ultimate
computer stud, maybe you'll be able to help me.  Yesterday when I was
writing my English homework (on MS-Word for Windows at a computer cluster)
MS-word detect a "serious disk error" when I tried to save the document.
Anyway, so I delete that particular file and re-save the document again.
It is after I came home that I discovered that the print out (I print
out the homework at the computer cluster) has a good part missing (there
are about six lines missing in one of the paragraph).  And the missing
words are filled with "*" 's.  Since that homework is due the next day,
I turn on the 286 at home to try to fix it with Windows Write.  However,
Write refused to read that part of the document - it stucked there with
a message of "unreadable data error" of something I can't remember.
The second time I tried it worked because the what was "unreadable" are
now fill by the characters of "X" 's.  I was really upset by this.  So
I started to play with my disket and I found out by the reflection of
the light that there seems to be a scratch on the disk (not the outside
, but the inside magnetic storage plate).  I thought maybe this is the
problem.  Anyway, I remember that we had PCTOOLS.  So I call my uncle
to help me deal with this weird disk.  He set down and backup the file
that I am currently working on (the English essay) hard drive.  Then he
start to use PCTOOLS's diskfix utilities to try to tackle the problem.
He tried COMPRESS first (I think, but I can be wrong, it can be disk-
repair or some other trick I can remember exactly).  It worked, but
afterward we tried to read from the disk, it turn out to be another
unreadable data - but it's worst this time.  The computer simply didn't
recognize that there is a floppy disk in the floppy drive and gave me a
message of "Abort, Retry, or Fail".  I noticed that there is a command
in pctools that says undo repair, but before I can even yell out, my
uncle had done the "three-keys solute" (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and reboot the
machine.  Apparently, the undo data was lost and I was doomed to never
to have my data back (there're some 15 more files left un-backup).  So
we tried another method in PCTOOLS's diskfix.  It's call Revitalize
Disk.  It is the only thing left that recognize that there's a floppy
disk in the floppy drive.  It took a solid 5 minutes of repeating
"reading....formatting....writing...reading....formatting....writing".
After it's finally done, I check the floppy, it's still the same!!!
It's over.  I then tried the DOS methods like unformat, undelete,
recover, restore, and any other way I can think of, but there's no hope.
By the way, when I used DOSSHELL to quickformat it, it shows a message
saying:
       "DISK ERROR - BAD CRC
        1.  TRY THIS PROCEDURE AGAIN,
        2.  DON'T TRY THIS AGAIN.    "
What is a CRC ?  I looked over all the dos help I can, including the one
in the computer, but there's no such word in any of the existing help
files.  I want to format it, but this will permenantly destroy the data
I had on the floppy.  I know those data are still on there, trust me,
so I can't bring myself to format it.  Now I'm thinking Norton Disk
Utilities.  Would that be any help?  I am out of tricks and methods.
Help me, please, please, please, please, please, please, please......

Thanks.

David Shih
IO20706@maine.maine.edu