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From: bisanabi@vrdxhq.UUCP (Paul Paloski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Recovering file that DIR says is 0 bytes.
Message-ID: <4151@vrdxhq.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 14:25:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: vrdxhq.4151
Posted: Fri Jul 24 14:25:19 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 15:04:33 EDT
Organization: Verdix Corporation, Chantilly, VA
Lines: 71


Thanks to those who have responded.  Several people have given me
similar possible solutions which I shall list and explain my problems.
I will try to be more specific this time.

First, I am using an IMS-286 AT-Clone, with a 70 Meg hard disk.
I am running SpeedStor, which has allowed me to partition this disk
into 5 logical drives (C:, D:, E:, F:, and G:).

Also, I tried to replicate the problem today on a true IBM PC/AT at
work with just the one partition, and Procomm's log file was updated
regularly.  I could *not* duplicate my error ?!?  They were both
version 2.4.2, so is it the Clone (using Phoenix BIOS), bad copy of
Procomm (I'll replace my copy with the one I just tried), or is the
SpeedStor partitioning software being weird ?  I have a RAM Disk, but
I brought one up during my test and it still worked fine.

>From: seismo!ut-sally!ghostwheel!dan (Dan Frank)
>   I thought CHKDSK did something like that.  If you run it on a disk
>that has orphan chains floating around, it will ask you something like,

>From: seismo!ncrcan!root ()
>  Try CHKDSK/F.  It should be able to group all the sectors that
>constitute the file into one file, typically named FILE000?.CHK.
>

I thought I had been warned against using CHKDSK/F because of the
partitioning and/or the SpeedStor software itself.  Someone today
told me I probably do *not* want to do this with partitions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Someone mentioned that they had done a similar thing by altering both
the BOOT sector and FAT table, giving me references in Advanced MS-DOS.
I checked Norton's book, and fiddled with the Norton utilities, enough
to have familiarized myself with the BOOT and FAT sector layouts.

>From: seismo!ncrcan!root ()    (Brian Onn)
>  If this doesn't work, try deleting the zero length file and then
>undelete it with Norton Utilities.

No, this will not work.  When a file is deleted, the only thing that
changes is the byte representing the first character of the filename.

(Actually, this may work.  The FAT does need to be updated some how
to represent the cluster chain as available.  Hmmm.)

>From: Gordon W. Ross 
>
>The Norton Utilities are supposed to allow you to fix this, though I'm
>not an expert on their use.
>
>Another possibility is to use lowly DEBUG to set the file size field
>in the directory entry which shows zero length, and then do a DOS copy
>of the file to another device.  You would have to guess at the file size.

There is no obvious command for doing this, unless the delete/undelete
mentioned by Brian above works.

However, both Norton Utilities and DEBUG can allow me to alter the
BOOT and FAT sectors by hand, but I'd hate to make another error and
lose 55 Meg of data.

Guess I should buy myself a backup program, back everything up, and
then 'play' a little bit.  Any preferences between Backup Master and
Fastback?
-- 

:-- Paul
:
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