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Message-ID: <3C88B389.7EACDDB4@rogers.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 07:50:17 -0500
From: jovra <jovra AT rogers DOT com>
Organization: @Home Network
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To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: 2nd FAT?
References: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4FD6645 AT emwatent02 DOT meters DOT com DOT au>
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X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH LOGIN at fep04-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com from [24.42.207.61] using ID <jovra AT rogers DOT com> at Fri, 8 Mar 2002 07:59:29 -0500
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Concerning the use of DISKEDIT (Norton), the nice thing
is that prior to a change to any sector (FAT's sectors
included) you can save a number of sectors to a floppy
and if necessary restore them at a later time.
I do not know if this feature is implementaed in all
versions of Diskedit. I checked with mine, but I found
no indication of the version.
So I would recommend that PRIOR TO ANY CHANGE to system'
sectors, to SAVE to a floppy the corresponding sectors
with the appropriate version of Diskedit ! 
(the procedure is quite straightforward, even is the
interface is not always user-friendly - well it dates
back to the 80's!)

-- Good luck : if at least one copy of your FAT is still
there, you should be able to recover it, and also as
suggested, a manual recovery procedure should be preferred
instead of an automatic tool. 

--Jovra

da Silva, Joe wrote:
> 
> If anything can fix this automatically, it's Norton Disk Doctor (NDD).
> However, automated fix-ups often make incorrect assumptions and
> do precisely the wrong thing, so you may prefer to fix this manually.
> 
> In Norton's NU (eg. V4.5) or DiskEdit (eg. V6), use the "Explore
> Sectors" option. This should tell you what sectors your two FATs
> occupy. Divide this range in two, to figure out the starting sector
> for FAT #2. Then enter this range of sectors as your "selected item".
> Now, you can choose to "write your selected item", in a variety of
> modes. Use the "sector" mode, and enter the starting sector for
> FAT #1. Viola! You have just written FAT #2 over FAT #1.
> 
> Joe.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dominic Winston [SMTP:dominic_winston AT angelfire DOT com]
> > Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 5:26 PM
> > To:   opendos AT delorie DOT com
> > Subject:      2nd FAT?
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > I have a hard drive that crashed. It was formatted, with several logical
> > partitions, under DR-DOS 5.0; and I had DR-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1
> > installed on it. It crashed during a Windows 3.1 freeze-up. I managed to
> > get into the crashed drive and found that, in each sector, the primary FAT
> > of each logical drive was corrupted. But, according to Norton Utilities,
> > the second copy of the FAT is still ok.
> >
> > So my question is... how can the (apparently) intact second copy of the
> > FAT be copied over the corrupted first copy of the FAT? Would doing that
> > bring my directories and files back? And, if so, is there a method to
> > replace FAT number one with the FAT number two? Norton Utilities doesn't
> > seem to be able to do this directly and I've searched for a command-line
> > utility to do this but to no avail. Why does DOS have two FAT's if one FAT
> > can't easily be used to restore the other??
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >
> > Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably
> > Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail.
> > Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com